• Consider a life
• in the time it takes
• your phone to wink dark

• ***
• On the prison camp
• raining
• and then not raining

• ***
• September...
• he yawns like a lion
• with his frosty beard

• ***
• He’s in rare form—
• “Go fuck your whores all you want!”
• ...the sidewalk abides

• ***
• November...
• does the six-inch grass wave
• goodbye or hello

• ***
• November...
• the crow’s shadow,
• pepper-speck on a gravel truck

• ***
• The blond boy
• arms too big for his torso,
• dwarfs his crew-cut friend

• ***
• New Year’s Day
• oatmeal cookie crumbs
• to the roaches

• ***
• The spider
• scrabbling at the metal wall
• finds no purchase

• ***
• Heard briefly...
• sizzling of the sand
• under night waves

• ***
• Snow
• slips white gloves on the bare trees
• as they wave west

• ***
• I cannot muster
• each Tuesday, that passion
• for the week’s remainder

Andrew Hamlin

Andrew Hamlin likes to photograph shoes and write about dog shit. He was born and raised in Seattle, where he resides today. He attended the Evergreen State College, where he wrote and edited arts coverage for the Cooper Point Journal. He is the film critic for the Northwest Asian Weekly, and he’s published arts coverage and criticism in the San Diego Reader, Village Voice, Seattle Times, Seattle Weekly, Goldmine, and other publications. He misses Helen Wiggin. Hamlin’s website is www.andrewhamlin.org.