Marble bunks
With cotton blankets
Fresh flowers
Hint of incense
The silence of dew
Brass markers
Flashing their starlight
On thin layers
Of a full moon
Everywhere
Lace & silk bras & shoe strings
Vodka bottles & tequila worms
And us Small children
With our large summer school bodies
JOHN MCKERNAN, who grew up in Omaha Nebraska, is now a retired comma herder after teaching 41 years at Marshall University. He lives – mostly – in West Virginia where he edits ABZ Press. His most recent book is a selected poems, Resurrection of the Dust. He has published poems in The Atlantic Monthly, The Paris Review, The New Yorker, Virginia Quarterly Review and many other magazines
