Tag: Deep Summer

“The Meat of the Plum” by Emily Kramer

MPJ1 Comment

1.
A drupe—the flesh of its fruit enclosing
the fruitstone-pit
of its seeds.

To droop and sag on the branch in the heat,
fresh swelling beneath taut sun
seared skin.

2.
To break skin; to bite into
flesh; to drip down yourself
into crevices.

To be atopic to stone fruits
and to eat them anyway, desperate
and ripe for the anchoring.

3.
And I think to kiss your mouth
is to eat a seed; to kiss and to eat and to seed.
And I think to kiss your mouth

is to cede ourselves to the blank
palimpsest, rubbed out hard
for growing.

4.
Oxidation of flesh; slight foxing;
lentigines that persist past fall.
The age and the wearing

of the page and the fruit,
sliver of thigh, high rise
suggestion of blush-pale meat.

5.
So what I really was doing was kissing myself
the way I used to kiss the side of my hand
when I didn’t think I’d survive you.

So what I really was doing was subjecting myself
to reaction the way the catalyst persists
unchanged and unchanging despite.

6.
Drupe—so close to dupe; to
duplication; to mark. Long lessons
patient bees can teach you.

Fuit—it was missing
the r for reduplication. Erit—it will
be loose transposition for writ.

Author’s note: “Fruit” came into Middle English from the Latin frui, meaning “to enjoy” (cf. fruition and fruitless). Fuit / erit: Latin indicative perfect and future indicative tense of esse, “to be,” respectively. The title is from W. Paley’s 1802 Natural Theology: “The flesh of an apple, the pulp of an orange, the meat of a plum, the fatness of the olive, appear to be more than sufficient for the nourishing of the seed or kernel. . . . when we observe a provision to be more than sufficient for one purpose, yet wanted for another purpose, it is not unfair to conclude that both purposes were contemplated together.” 

Emily Kramer is an editor living in Boston, MA. She received her BA in English from Barnard College, and her PhD from Boston University’s Editorial Institute. Her critical edition of Arthur Henry Hallam’s collected poems is forthcoming from Oxford University Press. This is her second publication in Moist.

Two Poems by Jack B. Bedell

MPJ 
I could no longer play. I could not play by instinct

	—Francesca Woodman, 1977

Not after design revealed itself—shadow,
	dark dress, sunlight, bare chest,

loose hand, knife blade. This math
	forces direction toward a

cut, somewhere. The lines between
	black and white, between

what’s revealed and what hides
	away from the light. The urge

to slice inevitable, not instinctive.
	What spills out a sum, not a choice.
Self-Deceit
	—after Francesca Woodman’s photographic sequence
 
Get close to ground—as low
	as you can, like a snake.
 
It won’t matter. As long
	as there is glass—mirrors,
 
windows, lenses—you can’t
	escape from yourself. The glass
 
will catch every angle you want
	to hide, every line where
 
there should be curve, every
	gap that should be full
 
of flesh, of fire, of light, of
	life. Even if you manage to
 
keep your face out of the frame,
	you know, we know, your
 
elbows, your back, the crevasses
	behind your knees. It’s all
 
plain to see. Even your desire
	to blur into darkness, to float away.
 

Author’s note: I’m fascinated by Francesca Woodman’s photographs. The composition, the perspective, the way light is exposed, it all seems like truth to me somehow, like the photos show a dimension of understanding I couldn’t see without them.  Whenever I write about Woodman’s work, my only goal is to let the photographs bring me to that dimension, to that level of understanding, or at least to the questions I have to ask to get there.

Jack B. Bedell is Professor of English and Coordinator of Creative Writing at Southeastern Louisiana University where he also edits Louisiana Literature and directs the Louisiana Literature Press. Jack’s work has appeared in HAD, Heavy Feather, Pidgeonholes, The Shore, Moist, Okay Donkey, EcoTheo, The Hopper, Terrain, and other journals. His work has also been selected for inclusion in Best Microfiction and Best Spiritual Literature. His latest collection is Ghost Forest (Mercer University Press, 2024). He served as Louisiana Poet Laureate 2017-2019.

“Knee High by the Fourth of July” by Amorak Huey

MPJ 
I’m driving through the pinkness of an Ohio sunrise
where everything around me is Ohio
bathed in pink light & somehow
looks exactly like the Ohio
someone who has never been to Ohio
imagines Ohio to be & the cornfields
are just where they should be
this time of year. This is how life goes:
every moment a simulacrum of itself, 
every season on a loop
back toward itself, every place 
a snowglobed version of that same place,
nothing so unique as we’d hoped,
not even love. I’m driving 
neither toward you nor away.
The distance between us holds steady.
It’s amazing we found each other in the first place —
think how a bee carries pollen
from one singular tiger lily 
on the side of a highway in Ohio
to another a mile away, or miles,
& for the rest of their time blooming on this planet
those two flowers are swollen with each other,
the possibility of each other,
& that possibility, it turns out, is enough 
to sustain all of it — each stem, pistil, petal
stretching open each morning 
to drink deep the pink-lit dew.

Author’s note: I moved to Ohio, of all places, a year ago. Moving at this age (I’m older than I think I am) has me thinking about distance and disconnection, about toward and away, about what we carry with us. Our kids are suddenly out of the house. Someone else lives in the house where they grew up. None of this has anything to do with this poem, or it has everything to do with the poem. Since the move, I’ve been trying to pay particular attention to Ohio, to what Ohio looks like, to what Ohio represents in my life — I think this is a way of holding on. It’s a kind of love.

Amorak Huey is author of four books of poems including Dad Jokes from Late in the Patriarchy (Sundress, 2021). Co-founder with Han VanderHart of River River Books, Huey teaches at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. He also is co-author with W. Todd Kaneko of the textbook Poetry: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology (Bloomsbury, 2024).

“Blades” by Matthew Murrey

MPJ 
Outside, the season’s thick sound 
of mowing: that rising, falling drone 
of combustion, steel, and resistance.

Persistence of green as this half  
of earth turns tilted sunward  
so the grass thrives and rises up.

Countless machines are taking on 
sprawls of lawns. In noise and fumes
they crop it short; they keep it down.

The mower I hear whines, sputters, 
almost stalls. The grass remains 
silent, though it smells moist and lush.

Tonight mowers, damp blades stained, 
will sit cool in the dark while the grass 
endures—healing its cuts and breathless.

Author’s note: I’m used to hearing people mowing grass during the summer, especially if there’s a mild day after several hot ones or a clear day after several rainy ones. A number of years ago I opened a window, and for some reason was really struck by the sound of one person out mowing their grass. It felt good to just stop and listen. I thought about my own experiences cutting grass and ruminated on us humans, our machines, and the living things around us. I had to hand it to grass; it gets cut and cut and cut, but just keeps coming back. In these grim times, I want to think there’s some hope in that.

Matthew Murrey’s the author of Bulletproof (Jacar Press, 2019) and the forthcoming collection, Little Joy (Cornerstone Press, 2026). Recent poems are in Roanoke Review, ballast and elsewhere. He was a school librarian for 21 years. His website’s at https://www.matthewmurrey.net/, and he’s on Twitter & Instagram @mytwords.

“Genuflect” by Jen Rouse

MPJ 
Her body is not my body--
this woman wrapped in steam 		her legs 
of melting wax and soft sea foam.

That woman of the interior 		        the hissing
bees of gaslight and brilliant 

hanging beads

And what if on this night 
she kneels by the window.

The diamond black snake 
of her braid
d
ripping 
down 		between her breasts as
she folds into herself 
like a swan.

What if on this night she thinks of sirens
and desire. She thinks of blood and bone
as it's pummeled against rock. What if half
the moon collapses and she turns her face 
to my face, 					                  there beneath
the window, cresting above 
a newly-formed wave.

What will she do with a skin of scales and salt?
What will she do as her mouth floods with pearls?

Author’s note: I feel a sense of untamed wildness in summer, and I think this poem represents that unbridled desire for transformation, to be magic, to be myth, to be the fabulous creature we sometimes repress for the day-to-day monotony of it all. And there is certainly a sense of questioning there. If we are to change places with the divine, we must ask, at what cost? Having recently undergone a dramatic change in my own physical body, I’ve been working with mermaid stories, as in “Genuflect,” to grapple with what it means to be home inside someone entirely new.

Jen Rouse lives in Iowa City with her partner and two rambunctious wheaten terriers. Her work can be found in Sweet Literary, Always Crashing, Lavender Review, and elsewhere. Fragments of V, her forthcoming chapbook, will be available Fall 2024 through Small Harbor Press.

“River Silt” by J. Turner Masland

MPJ 
in late summer
naked bodies beautiful

we walk sandy trails
willow thickets spit out
sun cliff tower walls
still we go deeper
 
salt water lips we swim 
muskgrass swaying in stream
wet rainbows quiver we glimpse
warm shallow ripples

we roll on dunes curving down
large bodies burnt brown 
soft red glinting in river silt 
lines that gorge bottom sound

recreational pleasure please
watch us
hard and touch us
gentle

dark forests dive
    deep down parted mounds
wood muscle moss
bush silvered gloss
cedar grain aged lines

an imp among
woodland creatures offers
blackberries and beckoning
eyes twinkle

stone worker builds   
bodhi brings down 
the sky rings truth off  
sun cliff tower wall echoes

over golden hour bottom showers
slick soft river silt
late summer naked bodies
wood muscle moss

holding and held
this orbit still spins

Author note: “In writing this poem, my wish is for the reader to share in the spiritual experience of a perfect late summer day spent at a hidden nude beach nestled between a willow grove and a sandbar, deep within an ancient river gorge. It’s a place where you can easily make a new friend while walking the muddy trails naked, and where years of body shame can melt away in the heat of the overhead sun. I hope this poem inspires you to strip down and go find a river to play in.”

J. Turner Masland is a queer land worker, writer and artist. He focuses on a creative practice that explores the intersections of ecology and poetics in the age of climate collapse and rising fascism. Turner lives on the Olympic Peninsula with his husband, dogs and a small herd of goats. His first chapbook of poetry “Hagstones” was published by WinterTexts in the spring of 2023.

“Towelled. Turtled. Flowered.” by Marjorie Moorhead

MPJ 
Hold hands with me as we gallop through
a velvet field of summer. 
All the popping-up-flowers, in crayon colors.
Periwinkle, cornflower, or dusty blue 
is chicory, the daisy of sidewalk’s edge.
Purple are clover, and vetch, 
growing in bunches in the verges.
Yellow buttercup shows up too,
and pale pink bindweed, morning glories
of neon plum, climb trellises, telling their story
of courtship with the sun.

By midday, we are wet with sweating 
and must keep drinking water for hydration.
Nighttime is soggy. Heavy with the day’s heat 
and humidity. Fan will be whirring at bedside,
blankets kicked off, maybe a towel laid down 
over the pillow. 
Caresses are sticky. Dreams hazy, taking us
kayaking through lily pads in turtled emerald ponds.

Author’s note: I wanted to get the feeling of thickness and richness that is the lush heaviness of hot summer days. I have a daily walking route, so am very aware of season’s plants-of-the-moment. Loving the shade of chicory took me to those particular crayons I loved as a child—cornflower, magenta, bronze, silver, gold, pine green. My second stanza quite literally describes this heat wave we’re in but then ends back in the hazy dreamy feeling of floating through thick water, rich with life both on its surface, and below.

Marjorie Moorhead’s books are What I Ask, and Every Small Breeze. Chapbooks, In My Locket, Survival: Tees, Tides, Song and Survival Part 2: Trees, Birds, Ocean, Bees. Forthcoming, Into the Thrum (2025). Her poems have appeared in numerous journals as well as sixteen anthologies to date. Marjorie writes from NH/VT.

“in which the houses don’t change” by Nat Raum

MPJ 
After “400 Lux” by Lorde


i should have been driving east 
this whole time, lavender shadows
and guava highlights emerging 
from the landscape as i barrel, hollow
but brave, through suburbia in my civic
and flimsy pink sunglasses. i used to
glide north or south through lush
greens swaying to the prelude
of an evening storm, pressing on
faster than i should to stay beneath blue,
beneath the blending of bisexual lighting
before my very eyes. i should have
seen the sunset like this, driving
further from an active horizon through
a smattering of vinylclad houses
set on crew-cut lawns, stoic
and imposing. i could never call it
my life, model homes fabricated
to be spread out across an old farmstead.
i could only envy its idylls, flamingo 
and lilac spots in the sky shifting as i find
a new gear on the road winding east 
from my parents’. the quiet roars around me
and i wonder where else i can find this.

Author note: This poem is inspired by a specific stretch of road in Baltimore County, Maryland and the way the houses and trees look when the sun is setting in the summer. I imagined what it would be like to photograph the light and feed it through these pastel-toned Lightroom filters I downloaded a while back, and then it became this piece.

nat raum is a disabled artist, writer, and genderless disaster based on unceded Piscataway and Susquehannock land in Baltimore. They’re the editor-in-chief of fifth wheel press and the author of the abyss is staring back, random access memory, camera indomita, and others. Find them online at natraum.com.

Two Poems by Kyla Houbolt

MPJ 
Weed Lore 2

Not long ago, all flowers
were wildflowers. Thus, to be
a weed is to be history.

We are beneath each other's notice.
How does that work? you might ask.
Cosmically.

Two planets
occupy the same space,
entirely unaware of each other

except when, occasionally,
something bothersome happens
and we need to assign blame.

Weeds are handy for that. So
is history.
Pastime

On the backs of rocks
I feel my archetypes
and how they bloom in summer,
especially the one that
I might call the
Wise-ass Small Time
Criminal. That character
who takes a funny kind
of pride in avoiding rules.

Hot weather seems
to encourage this one. 
I think of her as being
related to the kinds of moss
that very slowly make
soil out of boulders. She
makes the rigidities of life
into a growing medium
for whatever wants to grow.

Which is often not wanted
by polite society. There’s
the laughter of straps falling
off shoulders, of a touch of 
sunburn. A scent of
permissiveness. We don’t
need to go to the beach,
let’s just laze on this here
warm rock, thinking
of nothing at all.

 A Note About Summer

The more years I work in gardens, the more I value weeds. Summer is weedland, and they give more to humans than we yet fully know, if ever we will. My love for rocks, especially warm ones, is a year-round love. There was one garden I worked in that had a gigantic boulder at the top of its highest hill. That rock magnetized me and I probably spent more time touching and sitting on that rock than I spent on my work. I could no more avoid going to it than an iron shaving can avoid a magnet. I guess that’s kind of like the way summer calls up the green surge from the roots of things. I myself prefer spring.

–Kyla Houbolt

Kyla Houbolt writes poems and occasional reviews. She also gardens. More to be found here: https://kylahoubolt.us/

“Love Can Be a Fungus” by Francesca Leader

MPJ 
toxoplasmosis feels like	    love
	to a mouse, you say,		but it’s a	                 fungus

that makes mice think they 	love
	cats, so as to, ingested,	help fungus 	       make fungus.

infected cicadas fuck without rest,
	driven mad, ‘til they drop,	by a genital	         fungus.

but don’t mushroom 	         	networks	      
	bear tender tree warnings?     so what if they’re     fungus?

all we know of 	         	 love
	is it rubs the right hub     in a brain, shaped like       fungus.
	
we two, naked roots in this 	bed,
	my damp on your tongue,	slippery-sweet as a  fungus,

your cum in my 	         	wet—
	oh, that sly,			savory		                  fungus.

Author’s note: I grew up in the northwest, and used to thrive in winter. But after a decade living in Virginia, I’ve adapted so completely to the humid, scorching summers that I shiver in temperatures below 70 degrees. I’d rather sleep naked beneath a ceiling fan than wear longjohns and burrow under layers of quilts. They say some like it hot – I, now, am one of them.

Francesca Leader‘s poetry and CNF have been or will be published in Abyss & Apex, Broadkill Review, Hooligan, Club Plum, Identity Theory, Door is a Jar, Stanchion, Literary Mama, Poetry Aotearoa, and elsewhere. Her debut poetry chapbook, Like Wine or Like Pain, is available from Bottlecap Press.