“Summertime” Post #6: “A Summer Survival Checklist”

DIANE M. LABODA

A Summer Survival Checklist

When the forsaken virus starts to wane
after the men and children have survived,
stand silent and pray

to God this is the end. Stay and mourn
the collapse of compassion and empathy,
the broken morals, the shattered mores.

Don’t forget your mask. Do not breathe on me.
Resist the righteous bar crowd and instead
sanitize every inch of your body, your dwelling.

Turn your thoughts from flight
to the sunny beaches of Costa Ricas,
unmanned flight gates at the ready,

responsibility shed. The forsaken city
burns too, while vaccines, they say,
cause as much pain and bleeding

as bullets. Show your concern for those
who remain on cruise ships and suffer
theater concerts, and refuse

their civil duty, their civic duty to become
someone essential—a nurse perhaps
or test decoder, a true friend.

Refuse to run into the flame
of global hypocrisy, the emergency room
set on fire by BA-5 and lightning greed.

Run from the grocery store prophets
and café Christians touting signs of a new
order, a better species, a dead standstill.

Stand firm against January 6^th complacency,
Become a mourner who remembers
every name, every grave, every silent

prayer, every broken promise.
And return home.

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“Summertime” Post #5: “Riding in Diamonds”

MONA MOORMAN

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“Summertime” Post #4: “Glimpsing the Willow”

MONA MOORMAN

Glimpsing the Willow

A sea of green leaves, like feathers
Swimming silently in the wind
Waving the way until a breeze strokes
Over the bowing branches looping
Returning to their places, for the moment
To be swept away on an invisible current
Back to still
As the days move through years
In and out of love, life and loss

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“Summertime” Post #3: “Cold Air Hitting Warm: A Fragment”

TOM ZIMMERMAN

Cold Air Hitting Warm: A Fragment

Rain shower blew through a minute ago: cold
air hitting warm, like my sweaty back
on the new bedsheets I bought on sale yesterday.
Ann’s beside me, sloughing off the day
like a skin, then slicing and rearranging
the translucent strips into something new to hold
up to the eyes, to see the moon through.
My skin’s too tight to shed right now, so I lie
here simmering, simmering, ready to break into
a boil. Reminds me of the Revere Ware pot
I took from Dad’s house after he died. I’ve named
it Thumper: use it maybe twice a month,
so sprung it thumps on the stove burner when
the water gets hot. How many times did Dad
drop it during his late-in-life drunken
nights? What kind of man gives a pot a name?
The kind whose father named his son after
himself. There’s a mother mixed up in all
of this, of course. Someday I’ll introduce you.

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“Summertime” Post #2: “Fun of Summertime”

AYOWOLE OLADEJI

Fun of Summertime

is pleasant and decent, then all of a sudden, the hot summer heat starts to burn the internal loins, feeling the dreaded heat shining down on bald heads beaming and steaming so intensely to resist from the burning rays of summertime heat and feelings.

As you all gather together trying to cool down with the intense and scorching blaze of the beaming summer fun flying high and low enjoying the summer fun blistering summertime of fun and good fun

As the summertime fizzles and drizzles, summertime feeling free and peaceful all the gold of summertime relaxing all day long enjoying the summertime of fun.

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“Summertime” Post #1: “Summer Confucian (sic): getting my Bjork on”

DIANE M. LABODA

Summer Confucian (sic): getting my Bjork on

If I follow a raindrop
down the skylight glass, mirroring, prism-ing
the dark clouds above,
I get dizzy.
Not just a brain confusion,
but a literal spinning about in my dryness.

If I follow a Cottonwood seed-fluff
from the tree on a gentle zephyr,
tumble and turn,
I float a long way from home,
straight away into the next burrow,
drifting along curbs and sidewalks and hostels.

If I follow a robin, with its orange tuxedo shirt,
along the garden’s edge,
my hearing implodes
with every contraction of worm-prey
every tunnel between the roots
of crabgrass and day-lily.

If I follow a chipmunk’s excursion
under my front porch, darting in and out,
left and right,
I feel the vertigo of the earth come again,
shake the trees, send seeds aloft
and down between stumps and blades.

If I follow the moon as it wobbles
among the stars on its cyclical path around us,
I feel the chill
of the dark side rub against my skin,
the moon soil give under my bare feet,
its smile turn rancid under my lust.

If I follow the sun across the sky,
that defines atmospheric blue,
I sweat out words
for shine and brilliant, sweat out salt
and toxic epithets for an earth gone mad,
afire, shaken by our lack of insight

and our unspoken desire to be alone
contemplating our weapons.

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