Poetry by Anna Deason
Citrine skies of gold como miel,
dripping sweet and slow into
hungry, tired mouths.
Sweat and sunscreen mingle
in the mouth so it tastes
salty-bitter-toxic,
but you lick your lips anyway
because this is what it tastes like to be
alive.
Swarms of buzzing
Mayflies turn to
Junebugs turn to
sweet Cicada songs.
Fingers gripping slippery fingers:
quiet, whispered, fierce.
Spare hands roll up
checkered picnic blankets,
red and white and frayed.
Constellations of children’s dreams
made from laughter and joyful screams
beneath a fish scale sky.
Sprinklers spraying, giggles
bursting, like a lemon on a reamer.
Secrets form and slip behind
sherbet-toned hydrangeas, then
hide inside old beer bottles,
amber-tinged admissions
that smell
like acrid lighter fluid.
Hazy, cloying heat murmurs a tune
of intense and desperate youth.
