Listening to Fiona Apple’s Fetch the Bolt Cutters We Sit on the Rock Stairs at Canal Origins Park

by Nick Rossi

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Little bits of plastic
wrap pool and shiver
on the shoreline. Stagnant
water and industrial
driftwood. Damp wind
ripples the river skin
and coats our faces
in mist. A piano run
and stomp rolls over
the rocks. The skyline
half watches, tower tops
obscured by fog. A gull 
flaps past, desperate
for scraps. The gray barge
pushes its container
to the canal, eclipsing
washed-out No Wake sign
white and red on far cement 
embankment. A loose cello
string booms its depth
against the woosh of traffic
on Ashland. Three cottonwoods
loom over the still water
like Nasfaratu’s shadow.
Birds hide in the thicket,
weave their spring song soft
with high hat and snare taps 
clapped out offbeat. Wires
fade up the south branch
between telephone poles
and her voice layers itself,
building towards the sky, low
and thick with clouds.

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Nick Rossi is a co-founder / editor / designer at Sobotka Lit Mag / Ursus Americanus Press / No Rest Press. He has two chapbooks: Remind (Match Books, 2018) and Young Professional (No Rest Press, 2019). His work has recently appeared in or is forthcoming from Funny Looking Dog Quarterly, Columbia Poetry Review, giallo, DRYLAND, and elsewhere. He lives and works in Chicago, IL.