Diane Callahan

Things I Never Want to Understand

a dog’s tongue smitten with his human’s face, the tapping hand 
on a steering wheel, desert humor of saguaros waving too many arms, 

the sun cracking against the surface of stones disguised 
as teapots and clothing irons, the newlyweds braving the cliff’s edge 

to make promises and the pink petals they shed that feel smooth 
as baby skin, finding a handwoven purse in the pews and pacing 

the church streets for a stranger who looks lost, maybe those grains 
of sand beneath my fingernails I couldn’t quite bring myself to leave.

Diane Callahan’s poetry has been published in Rust+Moth, semicolon, The Ekphrastic Review, Dirty Girls Magazine, and The Sunlight Press, among others.