Milling around the track, ponies. Is the mall rising from the ashes? A funeral procession. You know there is a poetry reading in a café in some moldy corner this basement-scented hot August. Asphalt, flooded carpet. Hamster wheel squeaks, pull yourselves along by hand.

Milling ponies shiver. Starting gun crowds swarm the parking lot. Sun lancing cars. Heat’s pointed saber elevates your hair. A closeout sale. Everything must go. You pull down shadows, ignore each invitation, poetry elusive.

Your friends on the other side of the parking lot. You meet some woman June Lee or Joo Lin, vivacious. Shiny turquoise hair, purple lipstick. You don’t know if she’s a poet. Her laughter whinnies.

Milling-around-the-track-ponies, in the mall you search.  Finally, a door opens, a room full, twitching, foaming, and there is the man, the clipboard, half glasses down his nose, curly-hair pen over one ear.

You ask him. He doesn’t know you; he says all day. 11:00 a.m. Do you know your name. 3 o’clock yours. You wander into rafters a solitary crow to wait,

your friends across the parking lot clutch bulging bags, heat mirage, seeking. Will they make it when the poems shake black/turquoise wings.  Snapping yellow eyes poke the wind, a flock shedding feathers that calls over shoulders, sounds like lightning.

Rachael Ikins is a 2016/18 Pushcart nominee, 2018 Independent Book Award winner, 2024 winner 2nd place Northwind Writing Awards, author/artist of 13 books. Her cats and dogs remain unimpressed with this and will sit on the keyboard if she works past their mealtimes. Her artwork has appeared in NYC, Paris, France and Washington DC. Syracuse University grad, member Bayou City branch NLAPW, and Associate Editor of Clare Songbirds Publishing House, Auburn, NY.