Cleaning Up
(away from the shelter)
by George Bishop

After dinner, after the good hunt has gone to bed,
I think about how easy it was to pass on a few things,
how No and Thank you had that momentary flavor of friends.
I also remember how my tongue used to lick the air under

bright signs, how the neon felt dripping down my cheeks

as another homeless night drew near. I’ve been around
when dinner cancelled itself, known the dinners between
dinners, heard voices try to find the pitch of my dead mother.
I’ve come home for different reasons, washed up for hours.

George Bishop’s latest work appears in New Plains Review & Lunch Ticket. New work will be included in Naugatuck River Review and The Penwood Review. Bishop is the author of four chapbooks, most recently “Old Machinery” from Aldrich Publishing. His full length collection, “Expecting Delays” will be released by FutureCycle Press in 2013. He attended Rutgers University and now lives and writes in Kissimmee, Florida.