Tag Archives: heat

2023, poetry, summer, the no-scape, Working Class Literature

haze is all the rage and fashion

yes, it’s a new baptism over everything
and yes, Yeorgi, there is rain
and the rumor of rain; but all the signs
are not so favorable as to embolden
what we think of as faith

the coming rapture looks like mass heat stroke

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2023, Ohio River Valley Literature, poetry, river life, the no-scape, Working Class Literature

not quite August, and the winter memory is getting shorter

the world is burning
even for the beautiful bodies

a late July sun looks down
on the hottest days in 100,000 years

and some say ocean current collapse
is on the horizon

here we are still battling mosquitoes and mayflies
swearing we are not put off
by the large number of cemeteries

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2022, Ohio River Valley Literature, poetry, summer, untitled series 4

untitled series 4 (Summer 2022), number 7

And here we linger battling the spleen and feet.
There are lessons in the lonely hours between moonset and morning,
a consistency in the tugs pushing barge loads up and down river.
It’s generally quiet here. That’s what I told
the homeless woman rocking herself on a wharf bench. I’m interactive she called out
imagining I’d ignore her. Did she know
I noticed her pissing behind a bush an hour earlier?
These details don’t matter. These unscheduled details don’t matter
this is where life is here swimming in wet thick air
instinct taking over like the fish we are
dodging West Nile mosquitoes and post-colonial depression.

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