Summer, poem by Brenda Glasure

Some days I remem­ber, but most­ly the nights.

We swal­lowed hard, Ken­tucky bour­bon burn,

Cru­dités of pret­zels and Slim Jims and peanuts. 

We rubbed our eyes against the soft of dusk,

bird­song slept, turned crick­ets and bullfrogs,

the tight buzz of mos­qui­toes drift­ed past.

Our legs hugged the curves of the hood on the old Nash,

rust­ed-out obser­va­to­ry in the mid­dle of the south field. 

The radio whis­pered, thin nee­dle scratched the dirt,

old love songs and poets and steel guitars.

We flung our arms wide in the weak-kneed darkness, 

pushed grav­i­ty back, wished for pow­er to soar, 

sling­shot past the sun on our way to Andromeda. 

you be the prince, I the dragon. 

In the mid­dle of a wheat field, crop cir­cles in straw 

the earth spun, a Cohen record in the dark, 

the stars whipped, Medusa’s mane, 

motes of dust, stunned in a moonbeam. 

We made our­selves dance, awk­ward Jr. High sway,

just to keep from turn­ing to stone.

Bren­da Glasure’s poet­ry, cre­ative non-fic­tion, and short sto­ries have appeared in Strong Verse, Drift­wood Review, Sto­ry Gar­den 5 and 7 and sev­er­al oth­er online jour­nals – large­ly under her pen name, Adria Abbott Glass. She grew up in a small Ohio town, and spent her sum­mers work­ing on her grand­par­ents’ dairy farm. She cur­rent­ly lives on the North­coast, run­ning a hand­made jew­el­ry busi­ness and writing.