I drive to the city to a park, which are different in the city (city park), and sit in sun that only looks warm (because sometimes things only look warm), and the guy in the offroader next to me gets a beer from his trunk after a while and we sit side-by-side in our cars, not acknowledging each other, him drinking his beer in a ballcap, me nursing a new album on the radio, and the couple in the long grass just ahead is kicking a soccer ball and trying cartwheels. I feel as if there is nothing I could more reasonably be doing than watching the thin cat hunched on the treacherous side of the railing of a balcony across the street. (I can’t know this, but at home, my dog is yowling at every pass of the neighbors overhead. Who isn’t yowling at things passing just overhead?) You will ask which songs on this new album were my favorite—always the saddest ones. I wish I could connect over easy, simple, human things, like the beer, like the ballcap, like a soccer ball and the sharp coolness of the grass under-palm as I circle myself over it, but the saddest songs are my favorites, it must be agony and nothing else, and his beer must be a sad beer, and his cap must be to hide his tired eyes, and the couple must be on their last attempt to reconcile, and the cartwheels must be a frenzied swipe at what is always just overhead.
Assistant Editor Katelyn Roth has a master’s in poetry from Pittsburg State University in Kansas. Her work has previously appeared online at Silver Birch Press, in Apeiron Review, and at Heartland: Poems of Love, Resistance, and Solidarity. Currently, she lives in Columbus, Ohio where she is an MFA candidate at Ohio State University.
The Coop: A Poetry Cooperative 