Michael Mercurio

SOME OTHER WORLD

tattered & tender;   
some other station of the cross
organized along the route
of individual suffering. 
In extreme heat.
How grey insects stick    to the sweat on your neck 
& in the long grass
ticks volunteer their front legs upward: 
your children, waiting to be fed.

Beyond the cherry tree and cauterized lawn edge, 
wetlands furnish
eyebreak & privacy, though wind carries 
snippets of music, often

early Motown set sweetly 
above the clucks and yelps of neighbors &
their chickens. & so not factually 
some other world but the same ash

lifted from their firepit. 

Silhouetted against forest fringe: 
girl with a rifle, boy with a violin
& in the thickness beyond fireflies 
mimic fame: spotlight here, then
gone to someone else. 

& someone’s voice says everything breaks down
not meaning entropy

but sunscreen, bug spray, fallen trees, 
bodies both living & dead, 

this tipping point between
growth and decay: 

the world lives now, but you know what’s next.

Michael Mercurio lives and writes in Western Massachusetts. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in THRUSH, Palette Poetry, Bear Review, Sugar House Review, Rust + Moth, and elsewhere, and his poetry criticism has been published by the Lily Poetry Review and Coal Hill Review. Michael serves as Director of Community Engagement for the Faraday Publishing Company and is on the steering committee for the Tell It Slant Poetry Festival, held each September at Emily Dickinson’s house.