Gideon

The TV is just a gray box of static

so I listen to the Dr. Pepper machine

shudder in the hallway.

I pulled the black book from the nightstand drawer

looking for a place to write a phone number down,

and a four-leaf clover fell into my lap.

It’s brittle, the color of a dead lawn.

Right there in the middle of Job,

it left a yellow ghost on the page,

a faint green bruise on the paper

so thin I can see my own thumb through it.

Somebody was looking for luck

in the middle of all those boils and ash.