The heat wave brings euphoria to some:
With no desire to hibernate, the lizard
Poised keen and energized, flashes his scissored
Tongue to assess the climate’s strange perfume.
Two yellow butterflies are being wed
And climb a shaft of sun to celebrate
The sudden opportunity to mate.
The gourd assortment teems with overfed
Fruit flies and sweaty mold, rotting with glee.
I pour a glass of iced verbena tea
Cut from the fragrant sprigs along the wall.
It feels more like midsummer than late fall.
Author: Leslie Monsour
Leslie Monsour has published poems, essays, and translations in such journals as Poetry, Measure, The American Arts Quarterly, Able Muse, String Poet, and, most recently, Light, Huntington Frontiers, and The Dark Horse. She is the author of two poetry collections, The Alarming Beauty of the Sky (2006) and The House Sitter (2011). The recipient of an NEA Fellowship and five Pushcart nominations, Monsour is, at present, an independent scholar at the Huntington Library.
Gwendolyn Brooks: The Early Work and the Problem of “Reaching Everyone in the World.”
On October 12, 1990, I heard Gwendolyn Brooks read her poems at the Los Angeles poetry venue, Beyond Baroque, in Venice, California. Her presence and her voice had a powerful effect on me, and I wrote a poem about it almost immediately afterward. I thought well enough of the poem to send it to her, and was promptly rewarded with a warm thank you note from Chicago, signed simply, “Gwen.”