Ed Higgins

slanting metaphors

            “. . . if you’re not covered in dog hair, your life is empty.”

                                                                        --Elayne Boosler

midmorning light slants

through the skylight

offering metaphors

in a theatric of shimmering

suspended dust motes

like thoughts wearing motley

smiling from the world outside

skewed sunlight making me 

a still life on the unmade bed

my female whippet sleeping

beside me on wrinkled sheets

our identity is always stolen

by the descending fall of words

what can I write about this slanting

light or these swirling dust motes

or my sleeping whippet for that matter 

the dung beetle

you won't find

this in a fortune cookie

but the true dung beetle

gives nuptial gifts

to his heartthrob

and this seems

quite appropriate 

since love depends

on so much shit

you'd think it couldn't

ever happen:

but it does.

---

Ed Higgins' poems and short fiction have appeared in various print and online journals including: Part Two Review, Raw Journal of Arts, Ekphrastic Review, and Danse Macabre, among others. Ed is Writer-in-Residence at George Fox University. He is also Assistant Fiction Editor for Brilliant Flash Fiction. Ed has a small organic farm in Yamhill, OR, raising a menagerie of animals—including a rooster named StarTrek. A collection of his poems, Near Truth Only, has been published by Fernwood Press, 2022.