I’ve never bothered to learn the difference 
between Patience & Fortitude. 

One, chest proudly out, the other stoically 
tilting his head as snow settles along his cold spine 

and a man in a blue raincoat climbs him, rides him 
and snaps a selfie.

Stone lions presiding over pedestrians rushing 
sleeted streets, the woman teaching her toddler 

to walk up the library stairs—it’s all the same to you—
our hustle and hush—you receive them the same. 

In another city, you might have been defaced 
ragged red graffiti blanketing your gray manes. 

You wouldn’t survive where I’m from. My country 
is not a country, it’s winter, and ice like that 

snaps marble apart, our headstones crumbling. Patience, 
that slight hairline crack in your paw would split 

you in half. Fortitude, it isn’t you that keeps me here 
but fear I’ve been here too long to endure 

anyplace else. And I resent the idiot in the blue raincoat 
because I lack restraint and truth be told 

I’ve always wanted to ride you—
lion between my thighs striding down 5th Avenue. 

I know you don’t love me 
but when I place my hand on your flank, you give back 

whatever warmth or cool you have 
and I feel a solid unthinking peace.

Jamie L. Smith is an MFA candidate in Creative Writing at CUNY Hunter College where she has been awarded the Colie Hoffman Poetry Prize, the Randolf & Eliza Guggenheimer Award, the Academy of American Poets’ Catalina Páez & Seamas MacManus Award, and was runner up for the Miriam Weinberg Richter Award. Her work appears or is forthcoming in the Bellevue Literary Review, San Antonio Review, Peculiar: a queer literary journal, Not-Very-Quiet, and the Indie Blu(e) anthology Smitten: Poetry by Women for Women.

Emma Kohlmann is a prolific artist based in Western Massachusetts. Born in the Bronx, Kohlmann received a BA in Fine Arts from Hampshire College. In addition to creating zines, art books, posters, record covers, clothing, and jewelry, Kohlmann’s work has been exhibited widely in the United States and abroad. Kohlmann has had solo shows at Chandran Gallery in San Francisco, New Image Gallery in Los Angeles, Nationale in Portland, Jack Hanley Gallery in New York City, and V1 Gallery in Copenhagen, as well as group shows at the Portland Museum of Art, Museum of Contemporary Art Tucson in Arizona, Galerie Kornfeld in Berlin, and Kit Gallery in Toyko, among others.