here,

by Emily Shafer

here,
have an orange
peel I’m sorry
I ate the rest

I like your sunshine
pants & newsboy brush-
strokes across your face
why are you smoking
here, alone?

play the violin
for me but yours is out of
tune—too sharp—
it’s better than
the straggling sound of the mist

you’ve got fumbled change
mirroring your pedestal

here, have a
quarter I’m sorry
it’s my last

EMILY SHAFER is a New York City-based poet and photographer. She is an incoming MFA student in Poetry at Brooklyn College and spends her free time shooting film photography and asking to pet people’s dogs. Her work appears in The Hyacinth Review, Aphros Magazine and The Academy of American Poets. @emilyshaferwrites.