2.27.2026

SUMMER PEOPLE

Photo: Gerson Repreza

come children

                        party

     animals


to the house we built
     on rubble and ash


warm yourselves
     next to the bonfire
kindled from our limbs


     each morning
we consigned our dead


     in the afternoon
we tended
     our sick


                   at midnight
we danced
                  with the plague
     at the door
of our young bodies


     gorgeous

                     
                     as your own
in the glow
     of our long burning

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CRAFT NOTE
This poem is a chain of six “fractured” lunes. The lune, invented by Robert Kelly, is the so-called American haiku. In its classic form, the lune is a single tercet of 13 syllables (5-3-5). Unlike the traditional Japanese haiku, a lune doesn’t need a reference to nature or a cutting word. The lune is pretty much a “get out of [haiku] jail free” card.