Elegy
Summer of leafscorch and blight.
Summer of sunspots, the solar corona.
A hand held up to cover the eyes.
A hand waved rhythmically to hypnotize.
Summer of hesitation, cheap vodka, & fake lemonade.
Summer of shooting past the mark, of dry grass and loose shade.
Summer of metonymy.
It doesn’t matter anymore,
you say about everything.
I found paradise in the bottom of a bottle.
I found it in the small of a back bent over.
I began to think of you as six solutions, each worse than the one before.
With math with its problem.
Forty years of drought.
The distance to the moon contracts with breath.
You count the baby’s ten toes.
