We bought the new year puzzle yesterday:
a comic illustration of a bar
with aliens at drink and fight or play.
But it won’t interlock – most pieces are
designed to lean together and abut.
There’s nothing positive about the fit
so we don’t like the way the thing was cut.
But we can’t argue with the fact of it.

The object is to piece the pic together
without the box top, fast as we are able,
for this predicts the months ahead and whether
we’ll have the use again of our one table.
Of course we don’t know what the year will bring;
we solve and hope it’s surer than this thing.