From this floor I think of songs to play
on the shiny lotto piano I won.
I string them out, finish them off, and
there, I’m done.
From this floor I think of songs to play
on the shiny lotto piano I won.
I make a tune in minor C (but ever so sweet)
so there, I’m done.
I play songs—
I bought a piano . . .
I mean I won it—
I mean I bought it with what I won . . .
from this floor I’ll try to try to play
with everything good, with everything gone.
Katie Ford is the author of Deposition, Colosseum, and Blood Lyrics, which was a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize and the Rilke Prize. Colosseum was named among the “Best Books of 2008” by Publishers Weekly and the Virginia Quarterly Review and led to a Lannan Literary Fellowship and the Larry Levis Prize. The New Yorker, The Norton Introduction to Literature, Poetry Magazine, The Paris Review, and The American Poetry Review have published her poems. She served as a 2016 judge for the National Book Award in Poetry. Her next book, If You Have To Go, will be published by Graywolf Press in 2018. She is Professor of Creative Writing and Director of the MFA Program at the University of California, Riverside. Ford's fourth book, If You Have to Go, is forthcoming from Graywolf Press this August.
