Patrick Phillips, a finalist in Narrative’s Fifth Annual Poetry Contest, is the author of three poetry collections, Chattahoochee; Boy; and Elegy with a Broken Machine (Knopf, 2015), as well as a volume of translations, When We Leave Each Other: Selected Poems of Henrik Nordbrandt (2013). He received the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, the Lyric Poetry Award from the Poetry Society of America, and a Pushcart Prize. A graduate of Tufts University, Phillips received an MFA from the University of Maryland and a PhD from New York University. He lives in Brooklyn and teaches at Drew University.

Elegy at the Trinity Pub

by Patrick Phillips

The beauty of the fisher-wife
in that sepia-toned tintype


stopped me on the stairs,
cradling my beer


as I squinted at a sea
of tiny schooners bristling
People on couch
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