Penelope Moffet

Smoke

Late each night
       as I drift
             from bed to bath

            there’s a whiff
    of smoke
from a coat or sweater
     in the cracked-open
         hall closet

         as if one
      of the dead
addicts I loved
          or a cat named Smoke
       has returned

reaching me only
        when the other
                senses sleep

 

Penelope Moffet lives in Southern California and has worked as a legal secretary for the last 25 years. Her poems have been published in One by Jacar Press, Gleam, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Sheila-Na-Gig and elsewhere. She is the author of three chapbooks, Cauldron of Hisses (Arroyo Seco Press), It Isn’t That They Mean to Kill You (Arroyo Seco Press) and Keeping Still (Dorland Mountain Arts).