Poem of the Week

Catherine Pond, Third Place winner in Narrative’s 2018 Winter Story Contest and a finalist in the Eighth Annual Poetry Contest, is the author of the poetry collection Fieldglass (Southern Illinois University Press, 2021). She taught poetry at the Fashion Institute of Technology for three years and holds an MFA from Columbia University, where she was awarded the Academy of American Poets Prize in 2013. A PhD candidate in literature and creative writing at the University of Southern California, she lives in Los Angeles and is the assistant director of the New York State Summer Writers.

Flyover States

by Catherine Pond

I study my face in the fluorescent light,
rough and scrubbed bare as a tennis ball.
I’ve lost track of whether being alone
was a choice. In meetings I sit in a cold
metal chair surrounded by other alcoholics,
my notebook open, scribbling quotes
about self-esteem, but if I bring the wrong pen
the words look like snow piles on an empty page
and I spend the hour angry with myself.
I live in the largest city on the eastern seaboard.
In the flyover states there’s a family
with a three-car garage and a life I’m embarrassed
to admit I want. They know more than me,
those farmers like fishermen, hauling in
barrels of husks. Salt of the earth, heart of the sea.

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