By Binx R Perino
Summer sucks verdant life
out of our yards. Over firs,
the burning sky wears a haze.
You tell me you haven’t slept
right in months, the same dream
turns you over each night:
A rabbit pokes its twitching nose
out of the brush. You follow it
to the edge of the river, where water
isn’t really water anymore,
it shines like tarmac. The rabbit dives
into darkness, hardly a ripple.
You lean and wait. It rises,
the life of its small eye dulled
and its limbs tucked like a toy.
When a bird that’s not a bird
drops its mechanical claw, you wake.
We watch the sky turn purple,
bite into peaches, and listen
to the seagulls’ bicker. They shake
their wings by the low tide.
You say they should set out
to migrate soon, but each generation
grows confused by milder winters.
Seagulls fly off, rabbits curry
through the yard; we are left
to consider tomorrow’s tarmac.
Binx R Perino is a queer poet from Texas. While earning their MFA from Emerson College, their work has been published in Variant Literature, Cold Mountain Review, GASHER, and elsewhere. Their first chapbook, “Pure Light” (2023), is available through Bottlecap Press.
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