Seaside Summer (Reverse Double Etheree)
Enthralled by calls of speckled herring gulls,
I am ten again, salted beach bum.
My skinny legs buried in sand.
Shiny translucent sand crabs,
my summer pet of choice.
Salt-water taffy,
frozen custard,
our boardwalk
sticky
sweet.
When
summer
follows me,
suntan lotion
smells like happiness.
Outdoor ski-ball arcades
sound like splish splash salty waves.
Those gulls flying overhead know
our boardwalk tastes like cotton candy,
sky blue powder puff melted under tongue.
Haiku for the Lovers
When she unwraps him
from around her burning throat
which one will ignite?
Art information
- "Sky Changes”(Bahamas) © Jess Dipierro; used with permission.
JP Howard (aka Juliet P. Howard) is a Cave Canem graduate fellow,Lambda Literary Foundation Emerging LGBT Voices fellow, and native New Yorker. JP’s debut collection of poetry, Say/Mirror, was released from the Operating System in 2015. She curates and nurtures Women Writers in Bloom Poetry Salon (WWBPS).
JP's poetry has been published or is forthcoming in many journals and anthologies, including The Feminist Wire; Nepantla: A Journal for Queer Poets of Color; Adrienne: A Poetry Journal of Queer Women; The Wide Shore: A Journal of Global Women’s Poetry; and Cave Canem Anthology XII: Poems 2008-2009.
JP read the two poems here and others at TW's "Digital Poets and Nature" panel for the AWP 2015 conference in Minneapolis.
