We hit 115° last week, and today it’s raining, the remnants of Tropical Storm Kay making sgraffito of windshield and upturned faces. Sometimes summer eases into autumn, so that we don’t even notice we’re wearing sweaters. Not the summer of 2022, though. This summer is going out with a bang, all heat wave and flash flooding. What to make of all this? The blue palo verde is still posting blossoms even now, in September. “You’ve got to go for it when you can,” the black carpenter bees imply, as they buzz my ear. These fourteen writers are, indeed, going for it. Don’t say I didn’t warn you if you feel your head buzzing after reading their words.

(artwork by Austin Yi)

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Morgan Boyer: “Clocks” and “Water Bottle”

Charles K. Carter: “Conversation with a Grandmother”

Laura Carter: “Folio of Early,” “You Place Vowel in Origin,” and “Origin of Mirrors & Glass”

Holly Day: “Butterflies” and “A Quiet Conversation”

Jo Angela Edwins: “The Thought of Losing You” and “Spinning Out”

Jake Goldwasser: “Masterpiece” and “The architecture of a universe”

LC Gutierrez: “Untouchable on a Summer Day in Baton Rouge”

Casey Killingsworth: “Saxophone dreams”

Kim Malinowski: “Etched Text,” “How Poets See,” and “Aunt Anna’s Pie”

Ken Meisel: “Confession”

Thomas Mixon: “Turnover” and “Get to the Chopper”

Mike L. Nichols: “Pull the Covers to Your Chin (LC 10)” and “My Mother Is a Skeleton Part 1”

Greg Sendi: “The Peshaman Fragments”

Charles Springer: “Size Mattering,” “No Need for Intros,” and “No Longer Going In”