David Nielsen

 
Bullshit

In my house the plates
have been known to wash themselves.

The clothes too,
piled in a heap on the couch,

hot after the dryer,
have, from time to time, risen up,

crossed, and folded themselves,
like some kind of resurrection.

You say the bathroom won’t tidy itself,
but maybe it will.

Maybe it all happens
best when you aren’t looking.

In the bedroom the god of this story
sleeps soundlessly

beneath a silver moon.  

 
Run For It

Sometimes if I listen carefully
I can hear my daughter
arranging the furniture
in the dollhouse behind me

a chair scraping across the floor
a table pushed up against the wall
the little fake food
clicking against the plastic plates

my own wristwatch
ticking like a grandfather clock
and if the window is open
something bigger

a car
the wind yes
the mountain
like a great big animal

breathing through the screen

David Nielsen is the author of Unfinished Figures. Other poems have been published in Plougshares, Poetry East, The Southern Review, and elsewhere. He lives in Salt Lake City with his wife and their five children.