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On Wednesdays, she sits at the bar
at the pancake cafe. It’s 9:46 a.m.,
the slice of slow between commuter
breakfast and WFH lunch. Straight ahead,
two servers talk, rolling forks
into paper napkins. What do they talk
about? Her urban regret of never learning
Spanish. Faces not flavored with any emotion
or energy from what she can see,
their hands circle time with the leisure
of untroubled effort. The TV hangs above them,
muted. Like the golden rich of polenta
pancakes set before her, a gleaming, silent
barter. She joins the men, united
in a bubbled moment of her own labor.
Careful not to disturb.
Susan Kolon works in health education and writes from Chicago. ‘I hear a song and I can parrot the lyrics in moments. Writing poems takes me infinitely longer.’ She received an M.S. from Northwestern University and a B.A. from Michigan State University, where she was first published as a creative writing student. Her work has appeared with Corporeal Lit Mag, Dulcet Literary Magazine, Gnashing Teeth Publishing and Orange Juice, a poetry journal.
THE CITY KEY 