In Iowa City

ISSUE: Summer 2020

In Iowa City, the restaurant
where I worked on the weekend,
I befriended another waitress, blond & blue-eyed,
she grew up in one of the remote farms outside of town,
where wind was ruthless & could overturn a truck.
I was the first Jew she’d ever met.
I caught her watching me sometimes.

Jill Bialosky

Jill Bialosky is the author of four volumes of poetry, including The Players (Knopf, 2015) and the forthcoming Asylum: A Personal, Historical and Natural Inquiry in 103 Lyric Sections (Knopf, 2020); three novels, House Under Snow (Harcourt, 2002), The Life Room (Harcourt, 2007), and The Prize (Counterpoint, 2015); and two works of prose, History of a Suicide: My Sister’s Unfinished Life (Atria, 2011) and Poetry Will Save Your Life (Atria, 2017) .