A woman sings to her daughter
in the grass; a teenager
argues with her boyfriend
on a cellphone; an air conditioner
shudders
from a snack shop on the beach.
Three men watch two TVs in the shade.
Sweat bees circle
their beer cans. A five-year-old
squeals from the top of Sheridan’s horse.
The sun moves
in slow increments of dying.
A phone line cuts the sky like a
closed eye.
Mars brightens as dusk
twists its way into a heart.
A mosquito pulls
from my arm until full.
In August, Mike Puican’s debut book of poetry, Central Air, will be released by Northwestern Press. He has had poems in Poetry, Michigan Quarterly Review, and New England Review, among others. He won the 2004 Tia Chucha Press Chapbook Contest for his chapbook, 30 Seconds. Mike was a member of the 1996 Chicago Slam Team, and is past president and long-time board member of the Guild Literary Complex in Chicago. Currently he teaches poetry to incarcerated and formerly incarcerated individuals at the Federal Metropolitan Correctional Center and St. Leonard’s House.