Brown closing over the roadhouse, the wild
of the fog-collapse on the lake
Tamarack trees dust rust across the Huron
A blackbird caws
like a mystic & the low gray beat of rain
on an oil drum from the Chevrolet plant
shuttered just downriver
Yellow Corn Moon this far north
deepens like a star to orange
Painted white splintered screen door, iron
green sign for the state correctional
off the interstate in the distance
The colors of the strangers’ stories—his
burnt umber field—her midnight blue
heart
My half glass of warm gold whiskey
Michigan I return to you
Yellow moon, yellow moon
on me slanting
in the raked-slat back
of a mountain chair
Red-eyed cicadas by the billions
buzzing wild—
“Sunset Coucher de soleil – Cap Ferret Bassin d’Arcachon Ocean Pecheur Fisherman Beach Plage Waves Vagues Water Eau Boat Bateau Oiseau Birds bleu orange Claouey Aquitaine Gironde Bordeaux Voile – Picture Image Photography” by www.twin-loc.fr
Bonnie Jill Emanuel
Bonnie Jill Emanuel holds an MFA from The City College of New York, where she received the 2020 Jerome Lowell DeJur Award in Creative Writing and the 2017 Stark Poetry Prize in Memory of Raymond Patterson. Her poems appear in SWWIM, American Poetry Review, Mid-American Review, Midwest Review, Love’s Executive Order, Chiron Review, and other fine journals. Born in Detroit, she now lives and writes in New York. She is at work on her first full-length collection of poems.