by Michael C. Roberts
Lost in a Sunset
I ate a peach under a tree
as the sun went down.
My mind— on wilting spinach
in the fridge and the blister’s sting
on my heels, as the last sliver
of sun disappeared
behind the mountains, left gold-rimmed clouds
like the head of a king,
Birds glided through distant purple shadows,
and over the lake, a boat’s horn pierced air like canines
meeting slow skin.
I nudged with my tongue a string of peach
that lingered, the last bit of a candle
dying out between my teeth. Dirt
stuck to my legs, indented my skin
like a river carves her way
through the Earth.
Breeze swept up sunset’s colors
away for night, past my ears
but I couldn’t hear a thing
over the skateboards
thundering on the concrete
and all I saw that night anyway was my reflection
murky in bus window grime.
Katie Moino received her Bachelor’s in English with a Creative Writing concentration at the University of Vermont. Moino’s poems have appeared in Isele Magazine, Humana Obscura, Vagabond City Lit, Book of Matches, and elsewhere.She serves as a poetry reader for Atticus Review. You can connect with her on Instagram @katiemoino.
Michael C. Roberts is a sort-of retired clinical child/pediatric psychologist with a passion for retro-analogue photography. He often makes images on film via cheap cameras with plastic lenses and spring mechanisms to produce a dreamy soft focus on photographic film and some vignetting. The cameras allow double exposures in the camera, light leaks in reddish or whitish clouds along with scratches on the film. His film and digital photographs have appeared in American Psychologist, Health Psychology, The Canary, Images Arizona, Burningword, The Storms, The Healing Muse, and elsewhere. His book of photographs, “Imaging the World with Plastic Cameras: Diana and Holga,” is available on Amazon. Twitter/X @MichaelCRobert3 Instagram @michaelroberts1018.