I can live without fireworks by DS Maolalai

For Chrysty

my wife doesn't like 

how prosaic I’ve gotten 

now lately in her dedicated 

poems. "you might as well say 

I'm the bag that you use 

to get up the dogs’ shit

off the pavement" she says – 

but you are. I'm sorry – that's one way 

to say it in poems – that my life 

would be worse off without you

in every small way. I don't know – 

when you're gone it's like losing a finger

and trying to play the piano. like 

sleeping without any duvet, without

any pillow, without any bed. chrysty – 

I don't know what to tell you. I can live 

without flowers 

and fireworks, not without you.

DS Maolalai has been described by one editor as "a cosmopolitan poet" and another as "prolific, bordering on incontinent". His work has been nominated fourteen times for BOTN, eleven for the Pushcart and once for the Forward Prize, and released in three collections; "Love is Breaking Plates in the Garden" (Encircle Press, 2016), "Sad Havoc Among the Birds" (Turas Press, 2019) and “Noble Rot” (Turas Press, 2022).