If Couches Had Sphincters
Michael Meyerhofer

That means, like us, they are born
with mouths that need feeding.

It doesn’t matter that we can’t see them.
How often have we pulled open

their guts to find the remote control
they mistook for mother’s milk?

Sweet Christ, how they suffer:
all those shocks of spilled coffee,

chip crumbs like shards of glass,
toothy bouquets of house keys.

For us, they wreck their spines.
They sit naked in the dark, waiting.

And still we leave them on street corners
amidst all that dust and rain

without so much as an apology,
never mind how we’ll feel later

as we sweep up the mess they used
every inch of their bodies to hide.

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