Self-portrait as a backyard

by COURTNEY HITSON

Start with the slow cascade of helicopting
samara seeds, my unsprouted iterations eager
to maroon their source and start
elsewhere. Then, those rank and epic oopsies
of dogshit, their consolations of fertilizer.

The tight-lipped clothes line, waiting
to smirk in surrender to a family
of fat crows or flirting squirrels
or another invasive fleet of laughing, painfully
loveable parrots.

Aged shuttlecocks, abandoned by paddles
of debates, unresolved. Violas and their velvety
plies of petals, mom-hunting and soaked
in purple-want.

The entire place doused in soap-stick
remnants: daydreams. Sirenesque
stampede of bubbles, unrelenting
with their shells of iridescent film, to coax
me towards rainbows, not-there.

Ω

Courtney Hitson teaches English at the College of the Florida Keys. She currently has work forthcoming in Kestrel Review and Flyway Journal. Outside of writing she enjoys history, freestyle unicycling, and philosophy. Courtney and her husband, Tom (also a poet), reside in Key West, Florida, with their two cats.

Gerburg Garmann is a former professor of Global Languages and Cross-Cultural Studies at the University of Indianapolis, USA. Her scholarly publications appear in English, German, and French in international journals. Her artwork and poems have appeared in various magazines and anthologies around the world. She specializes in creating art for women.