JUNE 28th

REBECCA MACIJESKI

Wildflowers blushing red and pink in their bud vases.
Gnocchi and boiled potatoes. Dark bread
and softened butter. Trays of fresh tomatoes and cheese
as we practice listening, conversation and food
crossing paths in our glorious mouths.

The summer light slipping away,
its cool blue blowing along our bare arms and faces.
Each of us well-fed and believed.
Each of us holding the other in our ripe, foreign minds.

With this remembering
is the importance of forgetting.
Of holding the flavor but not the food.
Of holding time without the hour.
Of holding the brightness without the moon.
Of holding the green but leaving the country.

There’s one more thing I remember about that day.
How in the evening we discussed Kafka,
imagined that in our sleep we, too,
might grow a carapace
smooth as volcanic stone.
Opening and closing,
rusty mandibles grasp the sky.

Rebecca Macijeski is a Doctoral Candidate in Poetry at the University of Nebraska and holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She currently serves as an Assistant Editor in Poetry for Prairie Schooner and Hunger Mountain. She has attended artist residencies with The Ragdale Foundation and Art Farm Nebraska. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Poet Lore, Sycamore Review, Potomac Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, Rappahannock Review, Storyscape, Fourteen Hills, and others.