The season is perpetually summer with its residual heat underscored by crickets. We’re preoccupied with the memory of learning to swim in a frigid spring-fed pool in the woods. We fought the darkness at the edge of consciousness. This is where we first encountered that abiding presence perceived as weight, whenever we came up for air. The holy shifts its feathered stance. A galvanic skin response leaves the night crackling.

—Written in response to the instrumental Green Arrow by Yo La Tengo, from their album I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One (1997)

Cherie Hunter Day

lives in northern California among seventeen thirsty redwoods. Her short prose and poems have appeared in 100 Word Story, KYSO Flash, Mid-American Review, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Modern Haiku, Moon City Review, Quarter After Eight, SmokeLong Quarterly, Unbroken, and Wigleaf. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and widely anthologized.

Recent anthologies include Nothing Short of 100 (Outpost 19, 2018), NOON: An Anthology of Short Poems (Isobar Press, 2019), and Contemporary Haibun 17 (Red Moon Press, 2022). Her recent books include a prose poem e-chapbook, Qualia (White Knuckle Press, 2017), and an award-winning collection of short poetry, for Want (Ornithopter Press, 2017). A new collection of short poetry, Miles Deep in a Drum Solo, is forthcoming from Backbone Press in late spring 2022.

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ 42R Mill Street, haibun by Cherie Hunter Day which was nominated by MacQ for the Red Moon Anthologies, and selected for publication in Contemporary Haibun 17 (Red Moon Press, 2022).