by C.C. Russell
Watching My Daughter in the Nearly Empty Skating Rink
Lights down to nightclub level,
there is a progression
of ever more depressing
pop song covers
echoing off the surface of the ice.
The ink in my pen, cold.
I’m wearing a jacket, loving this
in mid-July heat —
the pleasure of a slight shiver
as I watch her
slide and try, try so hard to stay upright.
The melodramatic tones
of my youth
quietly strum
from the speakers,
distorted – notes not quite
the same from a different
guitar, from a different time.
My past, recast —
sung by a more insistent voice,
aching
in a whole new way.
***
Over Drinks, A Translation Of Tensions
The ice that cracks
in the glass,
the shock
of whiskey introduced.
It is an explosive kind
of succumbing,
a sudden kind
of giving
in.
The ice shatters
in the glass.
We are trying
not to.
Photo by Tima Miroshnichenko from Pexels
