Living in a living building
turns out to be disappointment,
suffocates whoever’s good life

I’m trying to lead. It’s a given,
intermission wine will be shitty —
but the mouth-breather beside me

in yoga class makes me want to drop
a bottle of juice at Whole Food,
see if it spews back, not forth.

Forget the china in mom’s sacred hutch
or inane fear of getting undressed
in front of the dog. Reality

is really out there — not different,
depending on whose point of view.
I’ll never wish to be shaded

by banjo strings, eager to kiss a stick
of butter. My eagle pose might suck
but I exhale through my nose, follow

each breath to peace — my pronouns
floating free, escaping rusty barbs
on the roof-top garden fence.

Timothy Pilgrim, a Pacific Northwest poet living in Bellingham, Wash., has several hundred acceptances from U.S. journals such as Seattle Review, Red Coyote, Quibble, Santa Ana River Review, and international journals such as Windsor Review in Canada, Toasted Cheese in the U.S. and Canada, Prole Press in the United Kingdom, and Otoliths in Australia. Pilgrim is the author of Seduced by metaphor (2021) and Mapping water (2016). Pilgrim’s poetry can be found at TimothyPilgrim.org. Pilgrim is pilgrimtima on Instagram.