By Jana Prikryl, from her debut collection of poems, The After Party, which will be published this month by Tim Duggan Books.

There are few things in the world more beautiful
than a university, the president in 1963
continues saying to me now.
I was doing a bunch of different things
but that voice was irresistible.
The strangers slumped against me on the train
who sleep like horses, upright and out
to pasture, they are that
exhausted, would say the…