S. Thomas Summers is a teacher of literature and writing at Wayne Hills High School in Wayne, NJ and an English professor at Passaic County Community College in Wanaque, NJ. He is the author of two chapbooks: Death Settled Well and Rather, It Should Shine. Summers’s poetry has also appeared in 2River View, The Pedestal Magazine, and Triggerfish Critical Review. His poem, A Fall from Grace won the IBPC 2009 poem of the year. Visit him where he breathes and blogs.
We followed her in, a stray, the fattest & first, the temple cat./ In a niche by the altar she crouches, watches them come: the/ mad parade we’d wanted, this troupe of heretics — the ass,/ alpaca, gyrfalcon — unbroken line of celebrants, creatures ...
Mother comes to me as I’m making honey cake, / measuring out sugar then whipping eggs. / Never mind that Mother left this earth / eighteen months earlier...
I miss things: swooping, diving, passionate voices/ in several African tongues, so far beyond me/ they might as well have beamed from the constellations.
Here’s the river I stepped in more than twice.// I can’t see them but I know the boats/ are going by in the sturdy fog...
And now you explore the hidden pockets and come up/ with a City Guide (in English) you picked up in Amsterdam./ Why did I keep that? Where were we going? But she’s/ not there to answer
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