There’s a corner of my mind
where I sell apples
from a sack, the fruit of all

my endeavors, for five cents
apiece. But who has
a nickel to spare? Businessmen,

gone bankrupt, take flight
from the windows of gray sky-
scrapers, their double-breasted

seersuckers gleaming
like ospreys diving into
the lugubrious

blue. Soon the sun will follow
on its nightly trek to hell,
as I too return

to my unlit room, hell-bent
on self-destruction.
In the back of my head lies

a squatter’s camp, where cardboard
tents are home to the
homeless. They sit in the muck,

hunched over grubby
plates heavy with nothing, their
cups overflowing with less.

Matt Morris has appeared in various magazines and anthologies. He’s received multiple nominations for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. His first book, Nearing Narcoma, won the Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award. Knut House Press published his latest collection, Walking in Chicago with a Suitcase in My Hand.