Submissions by Kai

So wrapped I am in their harvest poem,
The daylight is surreal,
Casting bleached blinding light
Through my line of sight,
And they gather warmth
As I, in my warmth, gather them.

Even the cold blooded insects
Take cover under bottle green leaves
In triple digit degrees:
The thorns brutal,
The sunlight glaring,
My shirt as black as berries
And soaked through.

Ruthless, their switch and swing
Sting the naked arms
That reach to pluck them.
These are not the brand
Bred like sponges in supermarkets.
These are not the...

The rain fell like bullets
On our aluminum roof
The year that food stamps delivered Christmas,
And you worked the night shift,
And begrudgingly, Sharon came to watch us.

Sometimes, though, when you were home,
You and I would bask on the wooly carpeting
Of our sheltered porch together,
To hear the thunderstorm beating
At the grey and hardened ground.

When I asked you, “Is it safe out here?”
You told me to count the seconds
Between each rolling crash of thunder
And blinding flash of lightning.
You told me there were that many...