I dropped a glass in Tulsa

and wound up leaning, from the sill.

It made the sunken sidewalk

reach that sill.

 

The cement rose up with its pieces

and glinted forward, out of air.

The glass was dark against the ground

and spread and in a slip of capture.

 

It took its time dispersing.

The glass was sharp and clear.

It did not part for feet or wheel,

like every other thing in Tulsa.

 

***

Jeremy Schmidt lives in Los Angeles where he is completing a PhD in English while working in the UCLA Scholarship Resource Center. His writing has appeared in Boston Review, Lana Turner, Los Angeles Review of Books, Prelude, and elsewhere, and a handful of his poems were selected by John Ashbery for the 2014 “Discovery” Poetry Prize.