Big Table Press: This Year 2025

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February 21, 2025

February 7th: Kurtis Ebeling

Morning 

I wake to the soft whir of a standing fan and lines of daylight against the wall above me. Tricia is lying next to me, still asleep and breathing gently. We’ve been dating now for six months. Last night, we got drunk on a bottle of wine and watched Hannibal before heading to bed. 

When I get out of the shower, Tricia is awake, and we sit together on the couch in the living room awhile. Duff rests his head against Tricia’s leg, and Cat kneads her claws into my pants. We sit in the grayness of a living room with only the light of an early morning to brighten it.

the morning sky     pressing 

     into the horizon 

like a palm against a shower door

     blues     behind the glass

and brick of apartment buildings

When I leave, it’s about 18 degrees outside, and the street is covered in layers of ice and snow.


a soft silence     the day

     after snow  —  the hush

of distant traffic     passing

     between buildings 

Cheney

Shraya and I work quietly in her office before I have to teach. We are both prepping, so little conversation happens outside of the occasionally shared meme. Her office has a large window, and the sky behind it—peaking through the slats of window blinds—is that perfect shade of pale blue you get on clearer winter days. She has a map of Middle Earth on her wall, and a sign that she found at Goodwill that says, “Milk is Your Best Food,” in white lettering against a pink background and an outline of a milk bottle. There’s also a coffee maker we rarely give ourselves enough time in the morning to use.

My first set of students have attendance issues, especially on Fridays, so it’s not remarkably surprising when only about five kids show up by class time. It’s “Free-Reading Friday,” so the hour is mostly theirs to read the novels they chose for a project they’ll have to complete later in the quarter (or to work on anything they need to). We listen to lo-fi quietly, and I spend most of my time trying to write or take notes about the morning thus far, with little (though some) success. By the time class ends, two more students have filtered in for a grand total of seven.

today     we read     

     and thus     there are 

seven students 

     present — Jude 

falls in and out of sleep

I sub for a friend at ten today, and when I arrive at his classroom, the students are all seated in a rectangle, workshop style. The room is oddly long, with the projector situated to the far left and the computer placed in a way where, to use it, you have to stand with your back to the classroom. 

Out of boredom, I spend most of the hour at the front of the room with my laptop, secretly listening to and piecing together the various conversations the students are having. There’s no place to sit, so I have to lean up against the podium in a way that hurts my back. It reminds me vaguely of standing behind a flat top grill as a line cook. There’s a conversation among the students about betting on the length of the national anthem at the Superbowl this weekend. I overhear one kid saying that Jon Batiste is singing, and another asking, “who the hell is that?” I also overhear a conversation about Kevin Hart being on the cover of some magazine. Eventually, a kid, who is in all likelihood about ten years older than I am, asks for MLA advice, and I get to walk to another part of the room and sit in a chair for a minute. 

students at work —

     discussing Superbowl

bets     and Kevin Hart

For some reason, I am reminded of Yeats’ “Among School Children.” The final lines of the poem, “O body swayed to music, O brightening glance, / How can we know the dancer from the dance,” always felt a little funny to me—though the sentiment is nice in some ways. I can’t imagine walking into someone’s classroom and finding a room full of people lost in their work. I also can’t shake the feeling that those lines describe the fantasy of a poet obsessed with history, mythology, and collective, national identities—obsessions that ultimately, as far as I can remember, helped justify Yeats’ later-in-life fascist impulses. To put things bluntly, fascism feels additionally pertinent three weeks into the second Trump presidency. The fascist brands of Yeats and other modernists (Pound, Elliot, etc.) are more akin to intellectual narcissism—think Plato, Nietzsche, Mussolini, etc.—than the Trump administration’s brand of anti-intellectualism though. Lots of nationalism in both however. Regardless, I’m becoming more and more grateful for the general chaos of my classrooms.

Attendance significantly improves with my eleven o’clock class. Compared to the previous kids, the students are remarkably quiet, but there are the occasional conversations. I am also just relieved to have my stool back.

the classroom is quiet

     despite conversations     

in whispers  —  the sound

     of the heater swells 

like the sound of waves

     against a lakeshore

Jupiter’s Eye

Shraya wants to pick up some flowers for Aimee. She gets a bouquet of yellow dandelions, chamomile, and other small flowers. In the spur of the moment, she decides to also get Aimee a mini chocolate cake, and a clerk behind the counter tells me my beard is, quote, “glorious.” I make sure to write it down and Shraya laughs. 

When we arrive at Jupiter’s Eye, Aimee and Justus are in conversation with the barista behind the counter. The front of the coffee shop is floor to wall glass, which allows a lot of light in. It also blinds. There are trees and tall glass-paned buildings to look at though. As expected, the place smells like coffee, bread, and new books, and the walls are covered in paintings and bookshelves. 

It’s Aimee’s birthday today. The three of us sing to her as quietly as we can and split the mini cake Shraya bought into four slices. Shraya and I stay for another couple of hours to try and get some work done.

The place gets busy and loud, so we leave earlier than we might have otherwise.

music and conversation

  —  sunlight blinds

through tall panes of glass

      like ice  —  and now 

I’m too tired

      for much of anything

Evening

I get home around five, and I am greeted by Nathan, my sister, Baily’s, fiancé, when I walk through the door. He asks if I want to try a Coors Light with some orange juice in it. It sounds terrible, but it’s not bad. He tells me his cousins call it a “Brass Monkey,” which makes me think of the Beastie Boys song. I lie down in my room and watch Bob’s Burgers for a while.

limbs      bending 

      with the weight 

of crabapples      covered 

      in snow      bow 

just behind the bedroom 

      window        to the 

evening sky      darkening

      blue      in silence

I get up around six-thirty to cook some gnocchi, with sautéed zucchini and a tomato sauce. 

cutting zucchini  

      into half-moons  —

the knife glides down

      with ease

I fall asleep watching TV.


Kurtis Ebeling is a poet living in Spokane, Washington, a previous poetry editor for Willow Springs, and a current co-editor for Croak. An MA in English and MFA in Creative Writing graduate from Eastern Washington University, he currently works as an English composition adjunct and is spending as much of his time writing or editing as he can. He has forthcoming poetry at Pictura Journal, and a number of other poems in small journals like Wild Roof Journal, Beyond Words Magazine, Cathexis Northwest Press, and The Dewdrop.

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