CALAMITY
SUTRO FILTER
This our wedding day ah yes and me I am hipped with joy, life ahead a bald egg hard boiled and ready to be salad. Never have I felt so protein fortified, glued to the bootstrap banks of the Schuylkill in my vinegar silk. Khaki smiles! How stock it still all is. Ducks dripping here and there into brotherly mud. Rusty bugs. Adjacent an angler squeezing bare rod between her knees, reaching for tall fish, calling out toothless, “That’s real neat.” Behind us an incontinent barge. The river’s body musks up against my bustle, seeping cityside with all manner of swimmers ah yes and me I am plundered with joy, life ahead trapped in light like cream like clay like coal like caulk like milt.
Inga Schmidt is originally from southwestern Pennsylvania and currently finishing her MFA at Hollins University in Roanoke, VA. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Puerto del Sol, Little Patuxent Review, Packingtown Review, and elsewhere.