Jackie Sherbow

Olympians

We played with metal and lights

and drank beer and stayed up

until three watching the olympics

despite my moral objections. I

was sunburnt and ocean damp

and then rain wet. I'd become

obsessed with the faces of athletes,

lean broad swimmers, just before

and after their trials. Everyone

brought their own thing to the viewing

and I felt like I could be that girl,

the one doing a handstand, heels

propped up against the wall,

smell of dirty hotel carpet

near my face, finding a way

to be alone and still seem together.

Jackie Sherbow is a NYC-based writer and editor. Her poems have appeared in Luna Luna, Day One, The Opiate, and Bluestockings Magazine, and as part of the NYC-based Emotive Fruitionperformance series. She works as an editor for two mystery-fiction magazines and Newtown Literary, the literary journal of Queens, NY.