lana hechtman ayers

A FEW THINGS I LEARNED THIS WEEK

after Willian Stafford

Gnats drowned in the cat’s water dish

look an awful lot like fleas.

Maybe all dead things look more alike

than different.

A poet once said first thought best thought

then crossed that out.

There are podcasts for everything,

even how to emoji your way

into a person’s heart.

My husband, who’s reading about cosmology,

says things in the universe are moving away

from each other so fast, the stars we see

aren’t sending their light to Earth any longer.

Rare things aren’t necessarily better.

Petrichor smells as pretty as it sounds.

A cow will cry out sometimes when the flies

stop biting its flanks.

Lana Hechtman Ayers has shepherded over a hundred poetry volumes into print in her role as managing editor for three small presses. Her work appears in print and online in places such as Rattle, Peregrine, and The MacGuffin.