Among the things 

I should not love but do

are Jolly Ranchers, sniffing 

Sharpies, how you say

cazzo when I bring 

home a quart of milk 

with more than zero 

percent fat, our street 

where rats lie flattened 

on asphalt while able-bodied, 

long-tailed others slither 

past, the smell of weed 

in the stairwell, carne 

on someone else’s grill.

Hilary Sideris has recently published poems in The American Journal of Poetry, Bellevue Literary Review, Free State Review, Gravel, The Lake, Main Street Rag, Rhino, Salamander, and Southern Poetry Review. She is the author of Most Likely to Die (Poets Wear Prada 2014), The Inclination to Make Waves (Big Wonderful 2016), Un Amore Veloce (Kelsay 2019) and The Silent B (Dos Madres 2019).