Blue Asphalt

A fly trapped
between double panes
of the bathroom window
smacks itself

into smeared glass.
I’m not more
or less despairing
than others

who wait in small houses
for cash to drop
into accounts
so we can buy milk,

tuna, saltines. No one
judges my lack of dusting
or scum on pans
I more or less washed.

That’s me at the window
watching blue light
on wet asphalt.
Maybe you want order

and freedom? Here’s
what you get—fly, irony,
scum, and daffodils
refusing to bloom.

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Barbara Daniels’ recent book, Talk to the Lioness, was published by Casa de Cinco Hermanas. Her books include Rose Fever and four chapbooks: Moon Kitchen, Black Sails, Quinn & Marie, and The Woman Who Tries to Believe. In 2025 her poems will appear in Good River Review, Book of Matches, Neologism, Rust & Moth, Streetcake, The Lake, Cider Press Review, and elsewhere. She received four fellowships from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts.