"Summer Haibun" by Aimee Nezhukumatathil

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend August 7, 2017   Summer Haibun   Aimee Nezhukumatathil

To everything, there is a season of parrots. Instead of feathers, we searched the sky for meteors on our last night.  Salamanders use the stars to find their way home. Who knew they could see that far, fix the tiny beads of their eyes on distant arrangements of lights so as to return to wet and wild nests? Our heads tilt up and up and we are careful to never look at each other. You were born on a day of peaches splitting from so much rain and the slick smell of fresh tar and asphalt pushed over a cracked parking lot. You were strong enough—even as a baby—to clutch a fistful of thistle and the sun himself was proud to light up your teeth when they first swelled and pushed up from your gums. And this is how I will always remember you when we are covered up again: by the pale mica flecks on your shoulders. Some thrown there from your own smile. Some from my own teeth. There are not enough jam jars to can this summer sky at night. I want to spread those little meteors on a hunk of still-warm bread this winter. Any trace left on the knife will make a kitchen sink like that evening air   the cool night before star showers: so sticky so warm so full of light            Copyright © 2017 Aimee Nezhukumatathil. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   "The haibun form is traditionally used for recording a location in a concentrated prose block, and ends with a 'whisper' of sorts to the reader in the form of a haiku. I was hoping to capture a season—specifically, my favorite part of late-ish summer when the lights in the night sky almost match the light found from animals and all their longing here on earth." —Aimee Nezhukumatathil   Aimee Nezhukumatathil is the author of Oceanic, forthcoming from Copper Canyon Press in 2018. She is a professor of English in the University of Mississippi's MFA program and lives in Oxford, Mississippi.   Photo credit: Martin Bentsen Poetry by Nezhukumatathil   Lucky Fish (Tupello Press, 2011) "Shoulders" by Naomi Shihab Nye "Untitled [I know now the beloved]" by Gregory Orr "Aubade: Some Peaches, After Storm" by Carl Phillips Help Support Poem-a-Day   If you value Poem-a-Day, please consider a monthly donation or one-time gift to help make it possible. Poem-a-Day is the only digital series publishing new, previously unpublished work by today's poets each weekday morning. The free series, which also features a curated selection of classic poems on weekends, reaches 450,000+ readers daily. Thank you! Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038