Aug 7, 2018 | Alexandrine, Gus Stevens, Hexameter, Seasons, Summer
The wading pool is shrinking with the wasted sun and the yellows of summer drain slowly away exposing red bricks beneath the glittering spray. With cast-off toys and leaves littered about their feet, the bone-soaked nine-year-olds will squeal, crash, and run through...
Jul 23, 2018 | Gus Stevens, Hexameter, Pentameter, Rhymed Couplets, Summer
Why are my poems so obsessed with doom? Is there no light their dark will not consume, no work they will not turn into a chore, nor child they cannot drown in metaphor? Sometimes beauty is neither fraud nor thief; sometimes a leaf is just a common leaf— a welcome...
Jul 15, 2016 | Alexandrine, Autumn, Erotic, Gus Stevens, Love, Seasons, Spring, Summer, Winter
Look my young fool, born with the Spring’s first green, our morning is all spent and now the afternoon bleeds red in the west. Will you really be so mean as to ignore the pot you set upon the coals? I want you, and the water will be boiling soon. Come, Fool,...
Jun 5, 2016 | Italian Sonnet, Sonnet, Summer, The Work of Greater Minds
Green little vaulter in the sunny grass, Catching your heart up at the feel of June, Sole voice that’s heard amidst the lazy noon, When even the bees lag at the summoning brass; And you, warm little housekeeper, who class With those who think the candles come...
May 8, 2016 | Dream, Gus Stevens, Seasons, Summer
Alive and heavy with health, syrup swells the root, and sun-dappled fields are filled with walking flowers: the blossoms of the body and the promise of fruit. We know, and delight, and dream away the hours; let us have sweet Summer’s cream ...
Sep 1, 2013 | Autumn, Gus Stevens, Quatrains, Seasons, Summer
The tyrant sun with unforgiving light bends the boys and girls like the August wheat. He makes them strip their clothes and beg for night like mountains made immodest in the heat. Rustling in a windless night, they seethe and sweat in anguish—should they cut their...
