National Poetry Month : Jaime Forsythe,

Four Poems for Summer

i.

Summer draws faint birthmarks

to the surface, bursts of dandelion

dizzy in a backyard pool.

I see your U-Hauls, summer,

emblazoned with bright spiders,

the spike in your infestation rates.

Emboldened, you

produce a sinkhole

from a garden-variety depression,

tempt onlookers to its soft

brink. I’m sworn at for walking

the wrong direction, swoon

toward my miscalculations of you

in a histamine response.

ii.

That point in the season

where a sore throat inflames

the population, spreads like

a lit candle tipped into a dry one,

and so on. Your spiritual leaders

freeze in mall atriums, summer,

dimes plinking into tin cups.

Summer, I didn’t make it

to the lake, let you undo

my swimsuit instead. You leave

your stuff on the curb,

shamed mattress spackled

with bug blood, feces, and wing.

iii.

On a drive to the beach,

a marquee says we do helium

and you complain of trouble

breathing. I rest my head on your sand,

summer, let language

be conducted to my willing ear

in this ancient way. I’ve decided to stop

chasing what doesn’t want me,

to hold still and see what lands,

release my balloons

and look away.

iv.

I’ve lowered myself,

summer, into three bodies

of water today alone,

your book held open to its page

by a bottle of cloudy tea

like you’ll be back any minute,

raising your sack of oranges.

A million tiny mountain ranges

glide to their limits and melt.

Jaime Forsythe is the author of two collections of poetry, I Heard Something (Anvil Press, 2018) and Sympathy Loophole (Mansfield Press, 2012). She lives in Halifax/K’jipuktuk, NS.