Why criticize this? It’s fine enough as is.

---

There is the ashy dawn

smoking into a lawn,

dry. A bicyclist rolls on.

I ask myself what

came first: the artist

or the critic? A symbol

that is obvious is in

its obviousness, self-

referential, and so not

obvious at all. A bicyclist

rolls on. A wedding wanes

in the cellar’s wine-laden

walls. A lamplight

shines on. I leave

my cigarette on the lawn.

---

Elijah Zitler is a graduate of New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts, Creative Writing, and Benjamin Franklin High School. He lives in New Orleans serving and being a barista.

---