Under a Calder Mobile, August 1959
JACKIE CRAVEN
 
A bird was missing, or maybe
a boomerang, but a blue one
fallen off the wire
so the others hung crookedly,
twirling and colliding
when the window fan blew strong.
Their shadows wobbled
over the spoon-shaped chairs
and the sofa where I drowsed,
a child adrift in the summer heat.
Dipping and swerving, the shadows
became my father’s Thunderbird
vanishing over a hill, then turned
into a swirl of phantom birds--
             Sofa to chair to beyond,
             sofa to chair and gone--
except for the heavy one
that smothered me with the scent
of cocktails and cigarettes. I woke
beneath the damp weight of my mother,
rocking as she moaned--
             Do you love me?
             Do you love me more than him?
 
SOURCE: Originally published April 15, 2020 AgniOnline
https://agnionline.bu.edu/poetry/under-a-calder-mobile-august-1959

The Woman Who Turned Down a Date with a Cherry Farmer
AIMEE NEZHUKUMATATHIL
 
           Fredonia, NY
 
Of course I regret it. I mean there I was under umbrellas of fruit
so red they had to be borne of Summer, and no other season. 
Flip-flops and fishhooks. Ice cubes made of lemonade and sprigs 
of mint to slip in blue glasses of tea. I was dusty, my ponytail
all askew and the tips of my fingers ran, of course, red
 
from the fruitwounds of cherries I plunked into my bucket
and still—he must have seen some small bit of loveliness
in walking his orchard with me. He pointed out which trees
were sweetest, which ones bore double seeds—puffing out
the flesh and oh the surprise on your tongue with two tiny stones
 
(a twin spit), making a small gun of your mouth. Did I mention
my favorite color is red? His jeans were worn and twisty
around the tops of his boot; his hands thick but careful, 
nimble enough to pull fruit from his trees without tearing
the thin skin; the cherry dust and fingerprints on his eyeglasses. 
 
I just know when he stuffed his hands in his pockets, said
Okay. Couldn't hurt to try? and shuffled back to his roadside stand
to arrange his jelly jars and stacks of buckets, I had made
a terrible mistake. I just know my summer would've been
full of pies, tartlets, turnovers—so much jubilee. 

Aimee Nezhukumatathil, "The Woman Who Turned Down a Date with a Cherry Farmer" from  Miracle Fruit.  Copyright © 2003 by Aimee Nezhukumatathil.  Source: PoetryFoundation.org

Summer
ROBIN COSTE LEWIS
 
Last summer, two discrete young snakes left their skin
on my small porch, two mornings in a row. Being
 
postmodern now, I pretended as if I did not see
them, nor understand what I knew to be circling
 
inside me. Instead, every hour I told my son
to stop with his incessant back-chat. I peeled
 
a banana. And cursed God—His arrogance,
His gall—to still expect our devotion
 
after creating love. And mosquitoes. I showed
my son the papery dead skins so he could
 
know, too, what it feels like when something shows up
at your door—twice—telling you what you already know. 
 
 
Robin Coste Lewis, "Summer" from Voyage of the Sable Venus. Copyright © 2015 by Robin Coste Lewis.  (Alfred A. Knopf, 2015) Source: poetryfoundation.org

Endless Summer
NATE PRITTS
 
. . .
It was the summer I fucked up    the summer    fucked up   me
fucked up   a fuck-up in the summer   & I spent time laying under stars
too much   time I wasted  the stars  you lied to me under the stars
& the summer was endless   the summer endless   it was an endless summer
. . .
. . .
endless   & I said things like   “If I ever see you again”
but   I’ll never see you again   I never saw you again   I made sure of that
& I circled   the lake   I went in circles    the lake was endless   it was
summer   I fucked up   too much time & I never saw   you again   & I
. . .
. . .
circled & it was   endless & the stars    lied to me   the summer
light   moving so slowly   I saw the summer light move   endless
& when I see you   the trees will cluster   green rage green   trees raging
with love   endless love & I’ll never see you   again   I made sure of that
. . .
. . .
wasted under the stars   the slow summer   light   the endless fuck-up
& you never again   you lovely   you summer you   everything that is now
never again   whatever that may be   the rage I loved   me under the stars
then & now   endless   wasting away me   haze wandering around endless
. . .
. . .
haze  it was endless  too much time & you   lied to me & I    said things like
I can’t describe the air on my skin can you   can you please   I know it was
important & the light from stars   moved   so slowly   & you   moved off
forever   how can you save everything   everything   important   endless
. . .
. . .
summer light   the fuck-up   the lake a circle   circling   the lake
how can you save everything   how can I   answer you the light of summer
stars I’m sorry  for my light   the endlessness of my endless & my   fuck-up
the me that is   now   looking back & thinking   & this summer circling
. . .
 
Nate Pritts, "Endless Summer" from The Wonderfull Yeare (a shepherd’s calendar). Copyright © 2009 by Nate Pritts.   Source: poetryfoundation.org

United
NAOMI SHIHAB NYE
 
When sleepless, it’s helpful to meditate on mottoes of the states.
South Carolina, “While I breathe I hope.”  Perhaps this could be
the new flag on the empty flagpole.
Or “I Direct” from Maine—why?
Because Maine gets the first sunrise?  How bossy, Maine!
Kansas, “To the Stars through Difficulties”--
clackety wagon wheels, long, long land
and the droning press of heat—cool stars, relief.
In Arkansas, “The People Rule”—lucky you.
Idaho, “Let It Be Perpetual”—now this is strange.
Idaho, what is your “it”?
Who chose these lines?
How many contenders?
What would my motto be tonight, in tangled sheets?
Texas—“Friendship”—now boasts the Open Carry law.
Wisconsin, where my mother’s parents are buried,
chose “Forward.”
New Mexico, “It Grows As It Goes”—now this is scary.
Two dangling its. This does not represent that glorious place.
West Virginia, “Mountaineers Are Always Free”—really?
Washington, you’re wise.
What could be better than “By and By”?
Oklahoma must be tired—“Labor Conquers all Things.”
Oklahoma, get together with Nevada, who chose only
“Industry” as motto. I think of Nevada as a playground
or mostly empty. How wrong we are about one another.
For Alaska to pick “North to the Future”
seems odd. Where else are they going?
​
Source: https://poets.org/poem/united?mc_cid=8ce80f8173&mc_eid=7b28ff41f7
Copyright © 2016 by Naomi Shihab Nye. 

A Poem for Pulse
JAMESON FITZPATRICK
 
Last night, I went to a gay bar
with a man I love a little.
After dinner, we had a drink.
We sat in the far-back of the big backyard
and he asked, What will we do when this place closes?
I don't think it's going anywhere any time soon, I said,
though the crowd was slow for a Saturday,
and he said—Yes, but one day. Where will we go?
He walked me the half-block home
and kissed me goodnight on my stoop--
properly: not too quick, close enough
our stomachs pressed together
in a second sort of kiss.
I live next to a bar that's not a gay bar
—we just call those bars, I guess--
and because it is popular
and because I live on a busy street,
there are always people who aren't queer people
on the sidewalk on weekend nights.
Just people, I guess.
They were there last night.
As I kissed this man I was aware of them watching
and of myself wondering whether or not they were just.
But I didn't let myself feel scared, I kissed him
exactly as I wanted to, as I would have without an audience,
because I decided many years ago to refuse this fear--
an act of resistance. I left
the idea of hate out on the stoop and went inside,
to sleep, early and drunk and happy.
While I slept, a man went to a gay club
with two guns and killed forty-nine people.
Today in an interview, his father said he had been disturbed
recently by the sight of two men kissing.
What a strange power to be cursed with:
for the proof of men's desire to move men to violence.
What's a single kiss? I've had kisses
no one has ever known about, so many
kisses without consequence--
but there is a place you can't outrun,
whoever you are.
There will be a time when.
It might be a bullet, suddenly.
The sound of it. Many.
One man, two guns, fifty dead--
Two men kissing. Last night
I can't get away from, imagining it, them,
the people there to dance and laugh and drink,
who didn't believe they'd die, who couldn't have.
How else can you have a good time?
How else can you live?
There must have been two men kissing
for the first time last night, and for the last,
and two women, too, and two people who were neither.
Brown people, which cannot be a coincidence in this country
which is a racist country, which is gun country.
Today I'm thinking of the Bernie Boston photograph
Flower Power, of the Vietnam protestor placing carnations
in the rifles of the National Guard,
and wishing for a gesture as queer and simple.
The protester in the photo was gay, you know,
he went by Hibiscus and died of AIDS,
which I am also thinking about today because
(the government's response to) AIDS was a hate crime.
Now we have a president who names us,
the big and imperfectly lettered us, and here we are
getting kissed on stoops, getting married some of us,
some of us getting killed.
We must love one another whether or not we die.
Love can't block a bullet
but neither can it be shot down,
and love is, for the most part, what makes us--
in Orlando and in Brooklyn and in Kabul.
We will be everywhere, always;
there's nowhere else for us, or you, to go.
Anywhere you run in this world, love will be there to greet you.
Around any corner, there might be two men. Kissing.
 
 
Source: Jameson Fitzpatrick, "A Poem for Pulse" from Bullets into Bells: Poets and Citizens Respond to Gun Violence.  Copyright © 2017 by Jameson Fitzpatrick.  Found at https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/147304/a-poem-for-pulse

The House at Long Lake
PHILIP METRES 
 
How a house is a self
     & else, a seeping into
of light deciding the day.
     A house so close

it breathes as the lake
     breathes. How a lake
is a shelf, an eye,
     a species of seeing,

burbling of tongues
     completing the shore.
How a loon is a probing,
     a genus of dreams,

encyclopedia of summer.
     Unsummable house
by the lake, generous hinge
     opening us. I loved,

in folds of sleep, to hear
     the back door’s yawn
& click. You gliding
     down toward shore

​& dawn, beyond all frames,
     reconciling yourself to
bracing Long Lake.
     Into its ever-opening, you--
 
Source: Copyright © 2018 Philip Metres. Used with permission of the author. This poem originally appeared in Tin House, Summer 2018.

​in lieu of a poem, i'd like to say
DANEZ SMITH                                                  
 
apricots & brown teeth in browner mouths nashing dates & a clementine’s underflesh under yellow nail & dates like auntie heads & the first time someone dried mango there was god & grandma’s Sunday only song & how the plums are better as plums dammit & i was wrong & a June’s worth of moons & the kiss stain of the berries & lord the prunes & the miracle of other people’s lives & none of my business & our hands sticky and a good empty & please please pass the bowl around again & the question of dried or ripe & the sex of grapes & too many dates & us us us us us & varied are the feast but so same the sound of love gorged & the women in the Y hijab a lily in the water & all of us who come from people who signed with x’s & yesterday made delicacy in the wrinkle of the fruit & at the end of my name begins the lot of us
​
Source: Copyright © 2019 by Danez Smith. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on April 29, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets.

Summer Haibun
AIMEE NEZHUKUMATATHIL

To everything, there is a season of parrots. Instead of feathers, we searched the sky for meteors on our last night.  Salamanders use the stars to find their way home. Who knew they could see that far, fix the tiny beads of their eyes on distant arrangements of lights so as to return to wet and wild nests? Our heads tilt up and up and we are careful to never look at each other. You were born on a day of peaches splitting from so much rain and the slick smell of fresh tar and asphalt pushed over a cracked parking lot. You were strong enough—even as a baby—to clutch a fistful of thistle and the sun himself was proud to light up your teeth when they first swelled and pushed up from your gums. And this is how I will always remember you when we are covered up again: by the pale mica flecks on your shoulders. Some thrown there from your own smile. Some from my own teeth. There are not enough jam jars to can this summer sky at night. I want to spread those little meteors on a hunk of still-warm bread this winter. Any trace left on the knife will make a kitchen sink like that evening air
​
the cool night before
star showers: so sticky so
warm so full of light
 
Source: Copyright © 2017 by Aimee Nezhukumatathil. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on August 7, 2017, by the Academy of American Poets.

Dear Death 
KATHLEEN MCGOOKEY
 
can't you see we're busy riding bikes in the sun? Later we'll cut out
paper hearts and sprinkle them with glitter. I have had enough of
you. I'd rather learn facts about penguins: what they eat, how much
they weigh, how they stay warm in the Antarctic. Some are called
Emperor. Some, Rockhopper. First-graders with gap-toothed smiles
hold out the class guinea pig for me to pet. Let's pretend you forget
all about us.
 
Source: Originally published in Heart in a Jar, Buffalo, NY: White Pine Press, 2017

Voice Clear As
KEMI ALABI                                                            
 
When my mom discovers heaven’s just a noise festival

the godchoir of all her loves breathing
unsnagged by asthma or Newport-dragged lung

the true song life makes untethered from a body
tugged at last from the men who hold its reins

will she blame her pastors (like I did)
for Sunday portraits of pooled white gold?

Will she miss the wooden flute of her body
mourn the days corner-propped, cloaked in dust

too pious to disturb a room’s skin cells
and stray hair with her sound

snapped awake at the nightmare of a slip fringe
the private note sung aloud?

Or, unburdened by hell

​will she exhale
and hear the bells?
 
Source: poets.org.  Originally published in Poem-a-Day on June 16, 2021, by the Academy of American Poets.