I want to possess June though it can’t be done. I breathe it in, let it
model my hair. I pull out its bounty by handfuls, clip up the branches,
deadhead the rose. So many things can be felt like the heat
to which I surrender, the shade almost all the way down.
OMG June. You are unutterable, not categorized although
they try. You have spread your light over more of the day.
You have unpacked your trunks to the dust. Nothing held back
which we take as example—grand slam/grandstand/grand. And me
an inch-light firefly, caught by a sideways swat. Before all
the breathing mass of you. Let who would touch, be touched.
Let who would hesitate, belay. Yards and parking lots crazy-streak
with messages of love. You put the o in odor of a summer sort.
Tablecloths and hand towels imitate your garlands and birds.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 27, Issue 2.
Susan Grimm has been published in Sugar House Review, The Cincinnati Review, South Dakota Review, and Field. She has had two chapbooks published. In 2004, BkMk Press published Lake Erie Blue, a full-length collection. In 2022, she received her third Ohio Arts Council Individual Artist Grant.
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