one summer
by Paula Brancato

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full
hot
slow
taut like a water balloon
self-sufficient
happy
honeyed perfume
scared careful
tuna fish for lunch breakfast dinner
20 shades of lush verdant green
a sun-drenched path
it could not last
fear
shakes
the body breaks
hitting a wall
dead inside
something dead inside
the coarseness of the carpet as I lay on my side
white callused hand of the man who didn’t want
it or me
salt of my womb
sun burning our blood
tea of my tears
baby evergreen
______________________________
Paula Brancato was one of the first women executives on Wall Street, a music producer in Hollywood and a strategic planner for The World Bank. Her literary awards include The Booth Poetry Prize, Danahy Fiction Prize and Brushfire Poet Award. Her work has appeared in The Kenyon Review, Mudfish, Bomb Magazine, The Virginia Quarterly Review, Ambit Magazine, Georgetown Review, Litchfield Review, and Southern California Anthology. Read her poem “Stoop” from the March 2013 issue of Gemini. Paula has taught poetry and screenwriting at University of Southern California and Stony Brook Southampton. She is a graduate of Harvard Business School, Hunter College and LA Film School and lives in New Jersey where she spends an awful lot of time with Myrtle her dog!

November 2022