and every day lately that’s what I feel like:
sitting meat. Or at best, moving meat, with
bills to pay and people to please.
The Germans use it to mean grit,
digging in, or if you want to get literal,
buttocks, as in keeping them glued to your seat
until the work is done. But

in these days of fresh horror and the whisper
of even worse coming, just inhabiting this
meat-cage is an achievement.
Like other times when
all I could think of was bed and when I could
get back in it, when every day felt like
February 2nd in the middle of summer,
sticking around is a job. It might be
all I can do, but

I refuse to take that final
step off the last basement stair into
the unknown; I want to stick around
to watch that long arc bend and I need you
here with me in this burning building
of a world, bothered but unbudged. Let them

evict us: I’m too nosy, too angry, too thirsty
with spite to concede. Come, love,
I will anchor the opposite end of this couch,
legs intertwined with yours, a sit-down strike
on this raft of cushions, two stubborn witnesses
holding on for dear life.