Poetry Pick with Kelsey

It's Springtime, Elise, and You're Missing All of It

Not the expected robin, or the ragged deer
stepping from the woods
to lip the new green—

but rather the girls in bikinis who stand
in Tallahassee traffic, lifting Car Wash signs,
their pert behinds a greater glory
than pollen count, or
even gravity.

Boxing ring girls, sans spangles,
they leg in heels from corner to corner,
the culmination of suffragettes
and Betty Friedan, their every step

a violin’s reel in the orchestra
of the sunny day, a glare
that makes me lower my shades against it all.

You’d say it was a word like heartbreaking—
how in the coffee shop
the young man’s shirt is open just enough
to see a flash
of curling hair—

Either that or tasty—

Let me put it another way—

even though you’re not sitting here,
the bored policeman directs traffic,
the strolling dogs sniff from ass to ass,
the telephones still ring.

-Rebecca Hazelton

Come see more of Rebecca and Hadara Bar-Nadav's work this coming Thursday, November 3rd, at 7pm in Beaverdale Books