Waiting for the Staten Island Ferry

Lillian Tzanev

I sit mixed
twiddling in pockets
holes wearing out the cloth.
They’re awkwardly angled
stuck on the corners
of my non-driver ID.
I start to imagine renting a car
to get on a ferry to Nova Scotia.
I take out my pen to record this feeling
my tender innards stoked in hopes
but all strokes of eloquence are blocked
by like a whole bunch of stupid like fucking fillers.
I look over to the Auntie Anne’s
and see the genitive case.
Me and my mango lemonade
my mango lemonade and I.

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Lillian Tzanev is a writer from NYC. She has appeared in or is forthcoming in The Allegheny Review, The Broadkill Review, The Bookends Review, Feral, The Messenger, Prairie Margins, The Rising Phoenix Review, Short Vine Literary Journal, Word City Lit, and WLN: A Journal of Writing Center Scholarship. Lillian currently teaches ESL in Bulgaria.

Author’s Note: Since I grew up in NYC, public transportation is my meditative space. I have become myself over and over again on buses, subways, ferries, and other public vessels.