Everything is too real and also pigeons.
Glossy city filled with magazine people
& dog shit. Too many cherry blossoms
& not enough tourists. You know, what we say
becomes reality. Yesterday I sipped the Potomac
from a chalice & grew wings. Today
I’m marinating in springtime 80-degree weather,
trying to ignore people talking too loud
over the corner store’s music. Do you believe
cities breathe? There’s no other explanation.
“Make sure to vote,” they say. But also,
“Nothing is real.” That hurts because.
What is more real than this?

Katherine Schmidt is a poet currently based in Washington, D.C. and the co-founder and co-editor of Spark to Flame: A Journal of Collaborative Poetry. Her work has been published in Bending Genres, Variant Lit, Rejection Letters, 3Elements Review, Unbroken, and elsewhere.