Adult Night at Skate World

By Christina Kallery

The poems in Adult Night at Skate World sift out the glitter in the gravel, unearthing both heartbreak and moments of transcendence in the seemingly mundane. These are songs of the anti-poetic, overlooked and assumed lost cause: Craigslist Missed Connections, getting snubbed at a rock show, middle-aged roller rink attendees, the class loser, a swan longing to mate with a paddleboat. But instead of scorn, they invite our laughter. Instead of dismissal, compassion. In place of cool cynicism, awe. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dzanc Books
• Release date: Jul 19, 2022
• ISBN: 9781950539734

Christina Kallery

Christina Kallery’s poetry has appeared in Failbetter, Rattle, The Collagist, Gargoyle, and Mudlark, among other publications, and has been included in several anthologies, including Best of the Web and Respect: The Poetry of Detroit Music. She has served as submissions editor for Absinthe: A Journal of World Literature in Translation and poetry editor for Failbetter. She grew up near the woods in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula before living in the Detroit area and then New York City. She currently resides in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Book preview

SWAN FALLS IN LOVE WITH SWAN-SHAPED BOAT

BERLIN (Reuters) - A swan has fallen in love with a plastic swan-shaped paddleboat on a pond in the German town of Muenster and has spent the past three weeks flirting with the vessel five times its size, a sailing instructor said Friday.

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He’s not half nuts, this German swan, to love

something so near the actual, you might squint

from shore, squishing sand beneath your toes,

to see its broad white belly part the shining

green, neck angled always toward the clouds

deflecting every antic of its frenzied,

mini-suitor. This happens, right? Who among

us with a single red corpuscle hasn’t dug in

and waited the whole doomed thing to its conclusion,

wanting some chill beauty to paddle its slow turn

toward us on the man-made lake? In your case,

not a Muenster tourist boat, let’s hope, but more like

the narcissist with lovely eyes and a voice

to unzip things to, or the one that cut the right

profile but sank like a Petoskey stone. But still,

in spite of tearstains, sucker punches, fists to the glass

jaw, the dumb heart beats, then tries again. See,

there he goes, beak agog and hissing at the rival

birds, wings spread to seem more menacing, black

webbed feet paddling frantic through the algae.

Then night sets and a silver moon beams down

on bird and boat, afloat alone, and in the pale

light looking for all the world like the shape of love.

MISSED CONNECTIONS

I look on here daily hoping someone noticed me enough to post an ad about it,

—Anonymous in Trenton, Michigan

To the garbage man in the orange truck

who chatted up a lady by the