Quelle Night
       

She is, tonight, in spite of.
That's what she said, going out,
locking the door, closing her winter coat
against the cold. She is
in spite of it all.

To hell, she says, with the weather,
swaggering to a cafe on Broadway.
she needs a drink and a novel
project. But how belabored
it all is. All these people

with all their first-world problems
talking over red-eyes, commending
their deadpan deliveries of quips
about Nietzsche and flattering
each other's dry Wittgenstein:

One of the most misleading
representational techniques
in our language is the use of
the word "I." (I see that—
and yet—)

Exhausting, she says. Quelle
night. What are you
searching for? As she strays
back home, the salt trucks salt
the dirt-sick snow:

In spite of, in spite of, in spite—

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Copyright © 2016 Sarah V. Schweig All rights reserved
from Take Nothing with You
University of Iowa Press Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission