September Evening #DVersePoetic

Summer has left the door outside open,

is drinking mulled wine on the patio,

leaving petals by her feet one by one.

Too focused on the sun’s slow set to notice

exchanging looks and Night’s arrival

its cloak across its shoulders slipping,

gold stars sewn like seeds on soil,

for Summer’s goose-pricked shoulders

brass tanned and shivering.


There were a few options for last night’s DVerse Poets ‘Poetics’ Prompt. I chose to write a poem by taking one of the lines provided (Summer is leaving too exchanging its gold for brass) and using each word as the starting word for each line of my own poem. The last two lines were the trickiest to finalise, but after a bit of playing around I managed to come up with a piece that I was happy enough to post.

Sun Sick

Tonight I am chasing the cool side of the pillow,

almost as elusive as breeze

despite the windows with their open mouths

panting in the heat.

Here, the backs of my knees slide slicked

between day fresh sheets

too quickly twisted into abandoned heaps,

lumps of coal still smoldering at the foot of this bed

all while the ceiling fan wheels in slow circles

the air curdling into soups so thick

it sticks in my lungs

like grief I want to scream into the cool side of a pillow

until my breath has turned cotton to swamp,

until I cannot tell the tears from my sweat

 

and the summer feels a little less like a coffin

pressing in on all sides.

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