Summer Song, by Leela Srinivasan

Bermuda Bound, by Gladys Kleinman (USA) 1940

Summer Song

It’s not yet too early for celebration,
sunwashed in white light. Clouds strewn
across the sky like milk blooming into coffee.
She moves through the season with tickets
in her hand, feathers around her neck. Flowers
dot the ground like tiny stars. Men watch
from above, as faceless as time, their breath
constant and insistent like the wind. The duchess
of watercolor and all her contradictions, no longer
carrying the globe on her back. No longer fishing
in the mountains of grief. She presses on,
her gaze resolute and looking forward,
as if the past is just a myth
told by somebody else.

Leela Srinivasan
​
Leela Srinivasan is an MFA student at the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin. Originally from the Jersey Shore, she holds a BA in Psychology and MA in Communication from Stanford University, where she wrote and published a collection of psychological poetry as her undergraduate honors thesis. She currently lives in Austin, Texas.