RUNNER UP
Big Mama's Poem by Patrick Swaney
The day is made up of language the way everything is made up of something else. The way from the street the woman in the window of Big Mama's wearing a Spiritual Gangster t-shirt, waiting for her burrito, writing in a notebook is writing I love you all, I imagine, because, spiritually speaking, I love you all is gangster, even if it can only be true in a limited way. In a limited way, I can imagine believing in this slogan as metaphor, and if so, I imagine I might feel moved to stop and to say to the woman that on certain days I too feel like a scribbler waiting for my spiritual burrito to be ready, and we might commune, without irony, over the cosmic rightness of this comparison. It's hard to love everybody, we might say knowingly. Yeah, but don't you also sometimes feel, she might ask, like a gangster waiting for your spiritual burrito to be ready and ready or not you're going to get up and fucking take what's yours, spiritually speaking? You know, sometimes I do, I can imagine myself saying, while feeling concerned that our meaning-making has gone too far. How do you make a slogan yours? I would want to ask her. Is this language permanently you? How do you choose? She would be clearly concerned at my flimsy commitment to our motto. I imagine I shouldn't have stopped. It is hard to love everybody, I might say again, before I left her to her burrito and notebook. The stream of language that makes up the day hurries on, sweeping the woman and her t-shirt away, sweeping away me. I don't resist.
Patrick Swaney lives in Athens, OH, where he is completing a PhD in poetry. He is the editor of Quarter After Eight. His work has appeared in Conduit, Indiana Review, The Southeast Review, and elsewhere.
10 PS_Spring_2016.indd 10
2/28/16 10:43 PM
