At the back stairs to heaven the gatekeepers
are the dogs you’ve owned. They decide.
At the first landing sit your ex wives
swatting flies with folded newspapers,
the ones with your obituary. Because
the front door is undoubtedly locked,
this is the only way in. And it’s always
too late to reconsider what the dogs
may be thinking, not to discount the plenary
considerations of ex wives who’ve had a chance
to compare notes. Harken, you poor living saps,
consider a few of the steps they teach
at those meetings, especially the ones
where you ask forgiveness and give yourself
over to a higher power or at least over to the dog
you now own who may put in a good word at the door
or maybe the current wife who asks you to hang up
the bath mat, bring home milk, put down the toilet seat.
—Selected for Honorable Mention in the competition for the Steve Kowit Poetry
Prize 2016, and first published in the San Diego Poetry Annual 2016-17
(Garden Oak Press, February 2017); appears here with permissions from both poet and
publisher.