Disclosure hangs in the air, thick as the humidity.
Everyone smokes, everyone lies, everyone carries
that little ice ball in the crook of the stomach.
Over a cluttered suburban horizon, marriages
implode in small showers
of vacuum-tube mercury.
The dial dulls, falls silent. Resurges. Spews static.

Over these shabby rehab lawns
squirrels loll, not yet fat,
as summer withers down.
Why should they care?
The nutmeats in their caches aren’t talking.

Robbie Gamble is a nurse practitioner who works with the homeless, helping them gain
access to health care. His poetry has been published in Poesy, Edgz, The Christian Science Monitor, Ibbetson St., and Nerve Cowboy.