Even if he had wanted her to drive, a day at the beach seemed full of possibilities. Cuddling and kissing in the waves. Feet fiddling in the sand. Exchanging intimacies. Finding each other again.

Instead, he played volleyball. A beer in his hand, he laughed with his friends, and turned his head to follow swaying bikini bottoms and bronze breasts. He’d come back to her blanket only to get yet another cold one. He’d give her a grin, and blow her a kiss. Then it was back to his friends, and all those shapely bottoms and breasts.

Her ex passed out 
on her blanket on the sand—
that’s going to hurt. 

She gathers towel and keys, 
pushes up her dark glasses, 

leaves him to burn in the sun. 

Gary S. Rosin’s

poetry and haiga have appeared, or are forthcoming, in various literary and poetry magazines such as Concho River Review, Eastern Structures, Failed Haiku, Harbinger Asylum, KYSO Flash, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Poetry24, The Legal Studies Forum, The Lift, The Wild Word, and Visions International; as well as in several anthologies, including contemporary haibun (Volume 17, Red Moon Press, 2022), Faery Footprints (Fae Corp Publishing), Lifting the Sky: Southwestern Haiku & Haiga (Dos Gatos Press), Texas Poetry Calendar (Kallisto Gaia Press), Untameable City: Poems on the Nature of Houston (Mutabilis Press), and elsewhere.

His poem “Viewing the Dead” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Two of his poems appear in Silent Waters, photographs by George Digalakis (Athens, 2017). He is the author of two chapbooks, Standing Inside the Web (Bear House Publishing, 1990) and Fire and Shadows (Legal Studies Forum, 2008) (offprint).

Selections of Gary’s poetry and photography can be found at his website, 4P Creations: http://4pcreations.com

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Crossing Kansas by Gary S. Rosin in The Wild Word (7 February 2020); includes audio of the poet reading his poem

⚡ Two Readings: “Apparition” and “Black Dogs” by Gary S. Rosin for Texas Poetry Calendar 2015 at the Blue Willow Bookshop in Houston, Texas (20 September 2014)