Jill Bialosky

In Iowa City, the restaurant 
where I worked on the weekend, 
I befriended another waitress, blond & blue-eyed, 

& in the mornings sometimes awoke so cold
—the wind in Iowa City was brutal—
those days of doubt, those days of troubled land,
that I did not want to get out of bed &

Why I thought I needed to rent a third-floor attic.<br>Why I thought one mattress on the floor, a desk, a vanity

Like a flock of dispossessed 
in a city of converts, we found our way 
to the Shamrock where the bikers 
congregated to play pool. 

If someone was kind enough to take us driving out to the long roads
that veered away from cornfields to the farms, pig roasts & parties 

When he was small,
I rented a little studio 
in a building on Ninety-Fifth Street so I could have a room 
of my own to write. The studio was the size of a bathroom.

What are words when they meet the action 
of what they attempt to modify?

I was washing dishes in the sink. 
My hands were wet. The baby was crying. 

Watch him flip
them the bird
after the ball

That day the boys
took us quickly.
They took us calmly.

Time passes
into the limbs of the boys
on the field stretching