by Jason Tandon
Shakespeare
My inner critic says
there’s nothing noble
about cutting the grass,
painting the fence,
installing a storm door
or shoveling snow—
though I might get a laugh
from the people up front,
the ones
penned in like cows,
when I end this poem
to plunge the toilet
upstairs.
Jason Tandon is the author of five books of poetry, including This Far North (Black Lawrence Press, 2023) and The Actual World (Black Lawrence Press, 2019). His poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, The Southern Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, North American Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. He teaches at Boston University.