Three Poems by Susan Dale

August:  2015:

Heaving in the heat with a Greek chorus of locusts
Eclipsing each and all, a blinding sun
ripening a bountiful largess of summer's bounty
succulent and plentiful
in a kind of ripening death
with a day's oppressive heat

Sleepless on sticky nights
And hearing the oppressive silence
___the silence of fears___unto death
Into the daybreak of a dew-wet morning
a cricket chirps
it's Paper-Mache songs



August 2nd, 06

The wind singing phrases
of bawdy clouds
And a draconian sun penetrating into
Heavy afternoon
Sun - miles deep
Fathoms wide
Quivers of heat waves
wrapping around
crackling tales of corn
bellowing with pomposity
To surge ten feet high

Standing water
rife with the debauchery
of spawning mosquitoes
Pink-gold frailty of peaches
Hanging in dreams of voluptuous peaks

Brooding heads of flowers
hanging down

Lustful vines of grapes
Bindweed enveloping a cringing landscape
Laser waves corresponding
With pink-cheeked tomatoes

Back of the woods, wheat fields
shorn of their beards
shimmer in brown corpses

Shrieks of black-eyed susans
Silver-blue thistles wearing spike helmets
Dragon flies painted with Art-Nouveau wings

And the lavish praise of butterflies on phlox

Mosquitoes with brass knuckles
Melancholy flies humming at the screen door
Honey sticky winds
Metiers of bird songs; shadows of bird wings

A narrative of sun and sky
Of summer; languid, wet-lazy summer



August

High, wide, deep August
Hot, thick, soupy
high-summer
Woven in garlands of chicory-blue and queen anne's lace
Fastened with tansy buttons

Drinking nectar from orange lily cups.
Holding tight, breathing heavy
encompassing, erotic August

Every nook and cranny does she fill with wanton flesh.

Lover of the red-flame sun thrashing pigment from her skies
Ripening copious spawn.

Languid, lush August
of purple-popping grapes
And pools of black-eyed susans
Hammering heat pounding rivers and lakes to froth.

Succulent, sultry August
thunder drumbeats
and cracks of lightening
sizzling the skies to curdle
to rent open
to rains of blind-passions
That lick tree-tops, and suckle the steamy earth.

Decadent, voluptuous August
Climbing in vines thick and rampant
Tangling within themselves, wrapping around tree trunks.
Rushing lickety-split
up and up
Enshrouding swollen clouds of autumn's promise.
Bursting, juicy-ripe August
Rubbing sun-soaked limbs
Against the bronzy flesh
of melancholy September.

Susan Dale's poems and fiction are on WestWard Quarterly, Ken*Again, Penman Review, Inner Art Journal, Garbanzo, and Linden Avenue.  In 2007, she own the grand prize for poetry from Oneswan.  She has two published chapbooks on the internet:  Spaces Among Spaces by languageandculture.org and Bending the Spaces of Time by Kind of a Hurricane Press.