Stream of Consciousness

The drip from the ceiling,
a small thing,
stain in the evening,
not worth fixing, even,
almost not worth mentioning

now that some love has gone
a little brown around the edges

like a rusty wrought iron gate
from one of the old hotels when those
were the days, with sparkling fountains
in the courtyard under cobalt arches
before something like an ocean

got carried away
and how the sound, it travels,

rushing

into the thickset walls
of the safest insulation,

that is, those thoughts of other places
filled with palms and splashes.

Tara Deal is a writer and editor living in New York City. Her poetry has appeared in failbetter, Flyway, nthposition and West Branch, among others. She is the author of the poetry chapbook, Wander Luster (Finishing Line Press), and her novella, Palms Are Not Trees After All, won the 2007 Clay Reynolds Novella Prize from Texas Review Press.