Expecting Nothing
In the fifteen minutes before work, I change my shirt, mix tuna and mayonnaise
for my sandwich, flick on the TV, and watch two women take the starting gates.
They hype one up to be the best and breeze over her challenger’s name.
Coming down from the first jump, Miss World wipes out hard.
Limbs dangle as she skids on her back into an orange plastic fence.
It doesn’t look as bad as they say, but then I see her struggle up on her skis,
collapse, curl, and yelp as if a bat had swung through her knees.
Ritual
Beige overcoat exhales cologne. Leather briefcase gums itself into gold linoleum next to the radiator.
Florsheims pad along to the liquor cabinet from which scotch is lowered, with a sigh, to the counter
where it waits while hearing ice cubes dance in a glass before exploding them in its warm bath.
Upper West Side Springtime
Daniel Saalfeld’s poems have appeared in many journals, including The Hopkins Review, The Seattle Review, Southeast Review, Cimarron Review, Chicago Quarterly Review, The South Carolina Review, South Dakota Review, Tar River Poetry, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and The Pinch. A Fulbright Scholar recipient, he lectured on modern and contemporary poetry in Russia. He lives in Washington, D.C. and teaches at the University of Maryland.