Character Walk

When writing I try to tilt

My script to a certain degree

As if it is a sail in the wind I write

& can really see both sides of its equation

I work at a for-profit for non-profits

We are lured these days to our downtown office

With a beer tap & popcorn machine

Square packets of chex mix and granola

Where we are told things like the TEAM

Comes first & TEAM is always all—

Caps in emails, a blue-glass

Building buried into the sky

& our cameras should really always be on

While emerging from the stairs of the train

Leaves me winded sometimes

In its sweeping into the elements

The three physical therapy clinics

I pass to get to my building hold repetitious

Movements into thick walls & straps

A friend says at her workplace she likes to pretend

She is acting so for a while I say it

I’m acting, I’m acting

& it does add another dimension to the moment

A way of being more genuinely in it

Going home I pass a woman using a manual

Push mower on her square of grass

That keeps choking but she smiles

Still at me & at the big intersection

A man balances coffee & a blue gatorade

Bottle on his head

Lisa Kouroupis is an MFA candidate in poetry at the University of Montana, where she teaches and serves as a poetry editor for CutBank Literary Magazine. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in antae, West Trade Review, The Hyacinth Review, Funicular Magazine, Lavender Review, and elsewhere.