This selection, chosen by guest editor L.M. Cole, is from Full and Plum-Colored Velvet by Anne Graue (Woodley Press 2020).
Summer’s End
Expectations are too high in summer
the result a blue haze in low light—
the air-conditioned waiting for the end.
First cold snap I breathe in, around my arms
a small blanket wound up in fleecy warmth.
The marigolds—I’ll miss their bursting blooms—
humidity gave them what they wanted
after holding molecules still in air.
Nothing moved except mosquitoes and flies,
a red squirrel balancing on a spruce.
I watch the gradualness of it all—
the daddy long legs wanting to come in—
I think of where they’ve been all summer long
now clinging to hinges and the metal frame.
Anne Graue (she/her) is the author of Full and Plum-Colored Velvet (Woodley Press) and Fig Tree in Winter (Dancing Girl Press). Her work has appeared in Gargoyle, Verse Daily, Poet Lore, One Art, Feral, Canary, The Ilanot Review, Leon Literary Review, SWWIM Every Day, The Museum of Americana, The Wild Word, and Anthropocene Poetry Journal. She has work forthcoming in Spoon River Poetry Review, Does it Have Pockets? and Neologism Poetry Journal. She is a poetry editor for The Westchester Review.
L.M. Cole is a poet and artist residing in North Carolina. She is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Bulb Culture Collective whose writing and art have been published with The Pinch Journal, The McNeese Review, Five South, The Dodge, and many other excellent journals and magazines. She can be found on Twitter @_scoops__ and more of her work can be found at linktr.ee/lmcole
