Much Was Said about Form

by Angela Mears

It was enough for me to be stretched out drunk on your bowlegged

backyard trampoline, the one you erected with strips of duct tape

ten summers ago this August. The air was wet and melted on the tongue

like chocolate. The creaking tire swing kept our time. Then you said

“The old poetics are dead,

it’s not enough to mean what you mean

anymore,” etc. etc.

We were lying beneath the arbors of your hunch-backed oak tree,

the one the municipality forbade you cut down because it’s, what,

thousands and thousands of years old. Splatters of mottled orange

sunlight shot through the branches, branding foreign shapes in our eyes.

Not wanting to change the subject too obviously I told you a poet’s not

worth reading if he doesn’t write about love, at least some of the time.

Everywhere I looked I saw the afterimage of the sun. Fuzzy imagined

green light shut out the yellow and red of a spectacular sunset.

I let you read me that Frank O’Hara poem about taking shits on Sundays.

The sun was almost down by now. Darkness brought a change to the near-

Autumn air. Frenzied squirrels fussing in the branches torpedoed

our gathering with acorn hand-grenades.

I should not have brought up Love.

Sticky Summer Heat

by Olivia Wainhouse

Sticky summer heat

Chasing perspiration down my flushed cheeks.

Wrestling hopelessly with comforters

Covers off–exposed and vulnerable,

Covers on–trapped bad thoughts,

Pervasive loneliness

of those endless summer nights,

Like a flipbook turned

by restless fingertips,

blending images together

to form motion

in a motionless night.

Summer day chases summer day

Like naïve fawns by a bustling highway

Daunting night

and dangling Chinese lanterns

faintly glistening in the distance

gently illuminating the unexpected.

Sticky summer heat

Forming pools of unrealized revelations

Dripping into the subconscious

and flirting with the restless.

Sticky summer heat

Chasing perspiration down my flushed cheeks,

Soft breathing interrupted by imminent sighs

of unquenchable frustration

Hushed by the mysterious summer of youth.

And sticky summer heat

Slumber hiding in the sheets

with the sun and the sensible,

Leaving questions unanswered

and a thick blanket of heat

Slowly suffocating its victim.

A Summer Haiku

By Micah Shapiro

Warm afternoons breathe

life into summer’s endless

mantra: “Go Cubs go.”