Joe Somoza
		A New You What kind of shoe is a "pump", I'm thinking, and I think it out loud enough for the cat to look over and wonder, distracted a moment from his preening. I guess I would be diligent too if I had only one fur. You want to look good for the world, whether it's a very green yard with inky shade under the trees, or along Central Park, where 5th Avenue buses emerge from the blur to make you think yours is coming and you'll soon be exhibiting yourself at the window, as you pass by. You become part of the scene for a while, that can be glamorous or gritty depending on your mood that shifts with the clouds and your blood pumping, harnessing chemical reactions that slough off old cells and rebuild a new you every few days--inside the everyday you that keeps growing old. Kingdom #2 Ah, the gray sweatshirt carelessly over the picnic bench! And when the lawnmower stops to re-fuel, other noises, such as the dove dialogues concerning existence and stereotyping. The quietly musing robin perched photogenically beside the brown Christmas tree that, tragically, was not converted to pulp. Spring must have sprung, shout the young tumbleweeds in their flax hair and lithe limbs, who don't know lawnmowers or having their family uprooted. You can peck in a tree or sharpen your claws there and the bark doesn't care, thinks the housefly, testing his footpads. Where sunlight comes from and how it arrives. How the wind makes it cool. Day into night until--one day-- life! The ocean carved out of the moon yearns for the moon.