Structural Support

The table has tilted for most of the year,

spilling the coffee and stoking the fear

that everything’s sliding away from the center.

So I found a thick ghost that no one would enter.

The 2011 Yellow Pages is stout,

filled with the names of the folks who went out—

the locksmiths and tailors who closed up their doors

before we all lived on the digital floors.

I shoved it down deep under the short leg’s foot,

its spine cracked and weeping a fine, yellow soot.

I’m writing the rent check on wood that is steady,

supported by people who’ve finished already.