Phil Primeau


Easy

The toy truck sits in dirt, we walk all night around the lake hoping to sneak a kiss, we avoid accidental thunderstorms & depend entirely upon 99 cent coolers. Summer and I can’t write, summer and it’s too hot to drive or listen to music, too hot to pretend or hold down a job at $7.40/hr, too hot not to spill white wine.

The basketball courts are full, the sidewalks are full, the tables under cheap umbrellas are full, the city pool is full, the park is almost full (and everyone is speaking Spanish), the ocean is not full. Clouds break hours of light, cigarettes burn down the time between work and evening.

Wake up without a trace of anything. Wake up with black eyes. Go to bed with no shirt and wake up with two skinned knees.

My cell phone is wet. I forget how to write in cursive, forget how to read my watch, how to anticipate the alarm clock. We meet in the parking lot to discuss what we could have done that day.

It’s summer we miss the ferry. It’s summer we arrive late everywhere. It’s summer hello Bill Withers and Jimmy Buffet. It’s summer no one is sad. It’s summer midnight lasts ten minutes longer. It’s summer the radio comes in clear. It’s summer every brown girl is sweet. It’s summer the water could be warmer. It’s summer eat a melon. It’s summer, it’s summer and everything grows up and apart. It’s summer and nothing really happens at all.

Phil Primeau is the founder and manager-in-chief of PERSISTENCIA* PRESS. He edits Dirt and was involved with the Starfish surrealist revival project before passing it on to Martin Marriott. Lara, a chapbook co-authored with Jesse Crockett, was published by Differentia Books in 2005. His poems have appeared in print journals and online venues, including RealPoetik, Eratio Postmodern Poetry, Moria, Skald, and issue one of Otoliths. He blogs now and then at http://procession.blogspot.com and can be contacted via e-mail at phil.primeau@gmail.com.
 
 
 
previous page     contents     next page