Kerry Trautman

LATE ’80s SUMMER STORMS
_{(after “Summer Bonfire” by Great Lakes Myth Society)}

Bartles & Jaymes peach
glass bottles clinking
hot patio concrete.
Maybe we didn’t notice
yard flowers outright
but I’d like to think we
knew they bloomed.

My friend’s
six-foot-five dad
scooped my 80-lb body
all scrawny kicks
hurled me into
the above-ground pool
fully dressed
laughing as I sunk.

All older brothers
were jerks.
We couldn’t afford
all the mall clothes
and Avon lip gloss
we wanted
or Cedar Point
every week.

No children know
when their fathers
will die.
Most fathers don’t know
themselves.

We hoped to be invited
to a backyard party
with a bonfire
a cooler of iced Cokes
rum snuck from
the back of someone’s
upper kitchen cupboard.

We made-do
sucked Redi Whip
from red spouts.
Wove string bracelets
as heat lightning
rumbled from west.
We waited it out.

Kerry Trautman lives in Ohio, USA. Her work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. Her books are Things That Come in Boxes (King Craft Press 2012,) To Have Hoped (Finishing Line Press 2015,) Artifacts (NightBallet Press 2017,) To be Nonchalantly Alive (Kelsay Books 2020,) Marilyn: Self-Portrait, Oil on Canvas (Gutter Snob Books 2022,) Unknowable Things (Roadside Press 2022,) and Irregulars (Stanchion Books 2023.)