Jenn Habel
And
Then, of Course, There’s Hope
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.
Jenn Habel's poems have appeared or are
forthcoming in publications such as The Greensboro Review,
Southern Poetry Review, and Puerto del Sol. She lives in
Colorado Springs.