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July Poetry Submissions

July brings a crop of new poetry from our readers and writers from around the world!

Thank you to all who submitted their work. Stay tuned for next month's writing and poetry prompts!

Summer Road Trip


Somewhere, sometime,

I’m in a car in summer

on the forever journey,

taking the pilgrimage north.

The world is scored

by the ever-present hum

of wheels on pavement,

the pitch demarking counties and states.

Desserts go by.

Trees go by.

Desserts with trees go by.

We only pack the essentials:

cookies, pillows, and

a thermos full of ice.

And cassettes.

Carefully organized tapes

of Juice Newton and Billy Idol,

the now Geneva-banned

Yentl soundtrack.

My slump of a teenage brother

contributing Dead Milkmen, B-52s,

the much-debated Police.

Time is meaningless on

this forever voyage,

but he always leans.

Leans on door handles,

against windows,

through the seat partitions,

forever leaning,

decades only stealing in

through his accessories

and the number of times

he sighs.

(The guitars are supposed to sound like that.)

Mom, the stalwart captain,

drives. Keeps driving. Drives some more.

Sunlight in her eyes,

dusk falling about us,

too early for words,

Mom drives.

She sings. She points out geology.

She makes every road sign

a member of the alphabet.

Mom drives. Ever onward,

on the endless road

hurtling toward mountains,

toward horizons.

She drives.

I puddle. I squirm.

I push the seatbelt

past the edge of

factory specifications.

I pull countless distractions

out of a backpack

too big to be carried by me.

I stack the pillows,

I alphabetize the tapes,

distribute the cookies,

monitor the ice,

count the miles,

count the minutes,

wait.

Try to wait.

Try to wait one more road sign.

Before asking to stop.

Before requesting an ETA.

Before huffing and whining

and wondering out loud,

will this go forever?

Because of course it does.

It’s endless.

Somewhere unseparated

from the reality of time,

it’s always summer,

and we go on,

in the humming car,

in the heat of the sun,

on the forever road

of the eternal journey to Denver

we go on

every summer.

— Anne Trominski

 

I've spent months writing this. 

I don’t know what I did today. 

I don’t remember today, 

I remember typing and typing and then erasing and starting over and typing again. 

My friend tells me I have time to finish it.

But every fiber in me is telling me it has to be now. 

The words are on the tip of my tongue, but I can’t get them out. 

I haven’t slept. 

I write another line;

The words are there, I just can’t find them. 

But the words are so close. 

I ask her for help. 

She wants to know what I’m writing about.