John Minczeski

John Minczeski, author of five poetry collections, has published in Harvard Review, The New Yorker, and St. Paul Almanac. He has traveled throughout Minnesota as an itinerant poet in the schools, and he's taught at colleges and community programs around the Twin Cities.

A Moth

When I open the cabinet door at midnight, a moth, its flutter like an airborne seed catchesin the updraft of my lethal hand. 
Half of them get away, keepingalive their chances of surviving to the next egg drop. December, I sip tea at the family sink. 
Today, the woman across the way tied a black ribbon to a pine. Calmthen as now, I muttered my new mantra,“put aside your hate.” In grocery aisles, 
in line at UPS. Sleep is a thing withshovels, Put aside your hate. Moths,bees dying from neonicotinoids.
Get a black suit, he told me years back.You’ll never be at loose ends for weddings or funerals. 
The dead don’t care how I look,so long as I say the right words,give their boat a push towardthe night’s dark blossoms.

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