At the Convention Center, by Emily Koehn

Emily Koehn’s poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in FENCE,
Crazyhorse, Cincinnati Review, The National Poetry Review and elsewhere.
Her work has been nominated for three Pushcart Prizes. She grew up in
Hot Springs, Arkansas, received her MFA from Purdue University, and
currently lives in St. Louis.

About the poem:

The small town I grew up in had a convention center that was used for many
different purposes. I wrote “At The Convention Center” after I was thinking about
the myriad ways people’s histories and stories connect and how they can be
embedded in a single place. The poem also comes out of a larger project about a
beauty contest.