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Tony Trigilio Labor Day Lake Michigan The tick-tock shush of the waves. A couple stretches their hammock between trees in shade where I could’ve laid. He points to an oak, she’s looking down at the grass. We wear masks because the air is weighted with particles that follow us like secret police. Leaves scatter, slushy bone-red and russet. Two teenagers on a bench between the grass and sand. A guitarist sits nearby, playing the same tidbit over and over, as if it will always be this way, a dream you lose the moment you start to describe it. Clink The engines sputtered and we migrated to park benches. The mayor forced the public library into a strip mall. It’s closed on weekends, even though I wrote all those letters the newspaper never printed. My church smelled like sandalwood after moving from the junior high gymnasium. Candy-gothic walls and pews and kneelers— the lake bobbing, timid. Sunlight squints off the waves. Not enough people live here for traffic jams. Drive ten miles any direction you’re swallowed by corn. This breeze comes from the moon and stutters by the time it reaches Pennsylvania. No clove-and- banana flavored beer in these parts. In honeycomb corner bars with names like The Saucery, sanctus bells clink, as if to signal something is about to happen. |
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