by Katie Pelkey

You took me to a bar called
The Dead Poet, which I found
coincidental, considering
I was in cardiac arrest.
Playing Shostakovich on the way
didn’t help.

Neither did those tales of
scaling rocks at Mohonk.
The corporeal pleasure you took
in holding life by the fingertips,
your body in ad-free suspense.
I added, I once free solo’d a
jar of peanut butter, and
neither of us laughed.

For some time, I let my eyes
penetrate the window,
explore the upper west
while our beers perspired.

Aren’t these trees so handsomely dead
in the city? Her sidewalks so amber
and red, like a perished cherry?

Not hardly, you said,

searching your glass for the reason.

Katie Pelkey is a second-year English M.A. student at Boston College where she teaches freshman-year composition. She spends her free time writing poetry and gardening but has never written a poem in the garden.