Love's Last Number. Christopher Howell

a one, oh man

      with no arms?”

      The man with no arms enters a frenzy of nodding

      and falls forward upon these treasures, devouring

      the spike straight away

      and peering curiously at the cheese.

       The End

4. I’m Not Sure about Dying

      on a day like this one, low clouds

      with some rain in them

      and some Mendelssohn tuning a broken viola

      for a child

      and the one-legged waiter at McLeary’s

      whistling like a god full of birds.

      I’m not sure I want to go off

      on a breeze such as this that strokes the awning

      above a battered door, with the portrait of Jean-Paul Sartre

      carved just under the top hinge next to the sign

      that reminds you to abandon all hope

      every time it opens, and reads “Just kidding” when it shuts.

      On such a day I’m not sure

      what my hands mean by what they can’t contain, that blue