“The hill I am walking on is not a cloud, but it carries my feet” by Eric Raanan Fischman

All day at work, I look for poetry. A man reaches into his pocket for change, and a handful of bells pours out. A customer asks if his dog can come in with him, and the dog spontaneously recites Pushkin.

I imagine that everyone in the lobby is writing poems. Skater Guy is writing an Epistle to Scene Girl. Michigan Squad is collaborating on a Sestina. Outside a woman breastfeeds her baby, a poem I could never write.

The dress code today is black and white. We get slammed in the afternoon, selling edibles to Odes, keeping the Sonnets satisfied. Our debit machines go down, but fall is just another word for fly, and everyone here has wings on site.

A girl I like smiles at me. An employee laughs at a corny joke. You don't have to force it. My boss shows me video of her daughter blowing her first bubble. REVS said, “Don't soup it up.” A customer brings cookies for the whole staff. GZA said, “Why should you die to go to Heaven?”

As soon as I stop looking for the poem, I find it. Not in the metaphors, but in bodies. In the lilt and hang of earthling chatter. REVS said, “Keep it meat and potatoes.” Not the diamond, but the rough. I won't even tell you about the moon.

About Eric Raanan Fischman

He/Him/His

Eric Raanan Fischman is an MFA graduate of Naropa University’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. He has taught free writing workshops in Nederland, Boulder, and Longmont, Colorado, and has had work in Bombay Gin, the Boulder Weekly, Suspect Press, and more, as well as in local community fundraising anthologies from Punch Drunk Press and South Broadway Ghost Society. He also curates the Boulder/Denver metro area poetry calendar at boulderpoetryscene.com and is a regular contributor to the BPS blog. His first book, "Mordy Gets Enlightened," was published through The Little Door in 2017.