Poems February 2022

Beer garden

Straight couples in denim and white Nikes
drink enough beer and then forget their keys.
The two of us mock them. As if.
As if we don’t feel the same mysteries.

***

It gets harder at night to see the view.
It’s late. The band that played songs no one knew
starts to pack up. We are adrift:
neither knows where to go or what to do.

***

When their divorce was final, papers signed,
my parents gave up fighting and were kind.
No one knows if or when the end
is near. You and I only know what’s behind.

—Nathan Blansett

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Nathan Blansett recently earned his MFA from The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins.

Topics: Poetry

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Beer garden by Nathan Blansett

New to The New Criterion?

Subscribe for one year to receive ten print issues, and gain immediate access to our online archive spanning more than four decades of art and cultural criticism. Subscribe

Beer garden by Nathan Blansett

Subscribe for one year to receive ten print issues, and gain immediate access to our online archive spanning more than four decades of art and cultural criticism.
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