From the Fishouse

At 7:30 p.m. on a Tuesday in April the doors
to the Pikes Peak F & AM Lodge
on Prospect Street are open. Members of that
Prince Hall Affiliated order smile
and nod as two doors south a woman says, “God,
he’s unbearable,” then laughs.
The last sun slants her bared feet, free and rich
as the gold for which the state’s
first Masons came; surely the owner of that blue
hound on Custer will be home
soon, and it’s possible the group’s convened
in the Counterpoint building
for some purpose other than to keep gays off
the school board or city council.
I don’t know why another Monet tacked to some-
one’s wall makes me think
the world will go on. Why one stunted daffodil
outside a rental house and I’m
alive. The International Political Economy major
had a question for last night’s
activist speaker: Given all the injustice she’d been
discussing, how does she stay
hopeful? She threw her black rope of hair over one
shoulder. My life’s pretty good,
she said. My kids and I laugh a lot. We like to dance.