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).