“Bubble Gum”
Your thighs burn holes in the seats
Of my once-grandfather’s car.
I drive us down main street
You wave your hand out the window
To a pair of ponytails swaying
Above Daisy Dukes.
Bubble gum pink lips
Popping along to soda cans,
I’m knee deep in love
With you in your pool.
My clothes watch from the sidelines
At me not knowing where to look.
You kiss me to the beat of
Fireworks in our mouth.
The sky might have been pretty.
I hold your hand, not sure
whose sweat belongs to whom.
You walk me home.
In my head I try to compose a
Cocktail of sunscreen, chlorine
Cut grass, coca cola
To preserve summer
In a mason jar
To sip from in December.
You pack your things
Into cardboard boxes
Into your mom’s Toyota.
You always beat my score at Tetris.
Firefly night lights guide you to me
To a midnight tryst.
Outside the post office,
The pool of lamplight
Glows on your skin.
We set off one last round of fireworks.
I tape over the holes
In my once-grandfather’s vinyl seat.
It’s September.
Leftover stenches of spit and sweat
Are bleached to extinction
From your once-mine t-shirt.
The leaves fall.
Our lamppost flickers.
“The Dirt Poem”
I belong to the earth,
Birthed from depths of soil.
Warmth raises blossoms
Thousands of miles away
Fish sleep, blanketed by her frost
Over me, in each creature.
My hair, woven from grass
And a tangle of roots
Is my meaning
Of great consequence
And little importance
To the dance of moths,
Faintly fluttering to a light,
My blind eyes search for warmth.
I find it where I came from.
Only inside dirt’s darkness
Do I see clearly enough
To smell her sweet soil.
Please don’t forget me,
A fading fawn. In time,
My toadstools will consume me.
Annie Elizabeth Kreiser is a freshman secondary education major with an English concentration. Her writing is inspired by nature, human interactions, and the places she has been.
Pitch - A Journal of Arts and Literature