Steve Barichko is from Connecticut. His work has most recently appeared in Muse Pie Press. His first full length poetry collection, "Apocrypha," is due out next year. Find him on Insta @stevebarichko and Substack @selfservepiehouse.

01.   elvis has left the building

toward the end like the king himself your old dog slopped around the living room in diapers. to sleep he needed trazodone stuffed into half a cold cut sandwich. was he kept awake by the hum of his soft young early days is another mystery that belongs to dogs. maybe death is an ascent you said to me on the terrace after we buried him or maybe we are just marbles collected into a cosmic velour bag. to see you bury three generations of dogs is not the same as having to bury them. elvis has left the building you said of each pup. your dad. then your mom. i have kept account of time sending us markers of its passing. but true friends are more than each other's secretaries. when i realized you had long ago eulogized everything you love and hate i went home and eulogized you.

02.    volunteer crop

killing frost. montauk daisies purposeless and absurd like broken umbrellas. carolina reapers dropped their leaves in trauma and have blushed forty peppers red. while outside gathering them i find wild cherry tomatoes tangled in all the ribcages. the fruit cold but still good for eating. this time last year i left fruit overripe sunburnt or halfbitten to overwinter. i threw my son’s green ball over the half frozen garden ground so he’d run and stomp. now i have enough ripe so late i can cook and bottle sauce for winter. sometimes i forget there is often another way to arrive at almost anything. you can stumble into ripeness as afterthought discarding moving with and without thinking. with and without asking.