Neoprene Summer

As faithful as a scientist

I probed great writers

complete works and bios

in preparation for a vocal contest

about comfort.

[Post-pandemic. Yeah.]

So I submit poetry

one each for 40 days

To maybe find relief

In the damned hurt

I feel

.

A man named Hemingway said,

“You shouldn’t write

If you can’t write”

[Oops.]

He claims, too, we’re all

“bitched from the start”

[Agreed]

He also stated hurt is necessary

to write seriously

So what the hell.

Here’s a loose poem about “comfort”

in the wake of tragedy

[If Hemingway could cheat, figured I can, too.]

…

Dove, shallow, back into photos

to catch the comfort of a summer

Brother’s cheekbones evident, image taken at a rail

Father’s nose suggested in another

Mothers full lips captured in concert

I vacillate between photos from a bleached coast line

Skin baked, extra dark

Curls exasperated at nape

To photos from a blue ridge mountain

Body in layers, head covered.

I stepped through everyone of those photos. Two lives brushed, barely missed, perhaps,

Always, I awoke to others along those steps,

But I plunge into the fantasy of a summer

Slide further down

Warm to bare skin

The space between hem and elastic

to have awoken next to the one in the photographs.

He wore a jersey.

I 0ffered $50 for it.

To prevent my lips from revealing

The One True Sentence

I would have destroyed everything

to pin that person in the photo to summer

reenact drives

It’s complicated.

I have a husband.

.

But like Hemingway said

Nothing is of any importance

that happened

forget personal tragedies

No truer words penned for the author

of a great love triangle who

rode the hard edge

of poetry

[Oh yeah. About comfort.]

.

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