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Jessica Smith

We barrel dance for chilly cigarettes / and European pints.


The Weather Used to Make Us

for D. Riordan

Count the beats between loose hours
in a time before we had the sensibility

to take pictures of ourselves
or when we remember how great

the weather used to make us. Count
the pink cells making up your face

but only in this specific light.
We barrel dance for chilly cigarettes

and European pints. Do you remember
that this was the first place we drank wine?

Do you remember that night walk,
when I tried in slippers to keep up

with you, but some of the windows
were broken? It was pretty

dark out. We got lost but didn't
understand that's just the life of this place.


Jessica Smith lives in Lakewood, Ohio where she is a poetry candidate in the NEOMFA and assistant editor at the Cleveland State University Poetry Center. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Diagram, H_NGM_N, and ILK.