A SMALLER ROUND TABLE

Claire McNerney, poetry, 2023

unlucky us, no way to set out,

my man Lancy’s van all broken down,

and good Gwen had no tools to fix it,

so this past summer, we stayed in town.

no adventures, no open roads,

just grand McMansions and the old Taco Bell—

where some witch called me an honorless wimp.

alone, I couldn’t tell her to buzz off to hell.

Percy was stuck bussing plates at the diner

but Gal went online, mapped out the trip.

we thought we had found it: adventure, an epic!

we partied at my pool until old Aggie tripped.

too-early celebration, our movement still stagnant

like the mosquitos mid-july in the slurpee heat,

my childhood sword now hid in my bedroom

once pulled from a stone, now paper-wrapped, neat.

late august I saved up enough for a car,

a Prius from twenty-ten: my horse, no power.

it let us dream after the midnight shifts,

beyond strip malls and stoplights and too many hours.

but with gas prices as high as they were,

we couldn’t mount our steed to quest.

the Holy Grail remains un-sought-for—

(next summer, maybe, we’ll make it out west)