Cincinnati
Lisa Summe
I smile at you for hours and so do the tiki men
because you’re the prettiest girl in this weird bar.
We have the best sex after the party and it’s intimate as hell:
little lamp you just touch to turn on, little eyelashes,
soft sheets in your cousin’s attic with a little cat inside,
little monsters we invent, little sparks in our breath.
A little’s enough.
Your bare hands. My god. This is the night
we run out of nothing but breath, the night
we run miles with our mouths.
LISA SUMME was born and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio, and earned her BA and MA in English at the University of Cincinnati. Her poems have appeared in Revolution House, Fourth River, Mead, and elsewhere. Currently an MFA candidate in poetry at Virginia Tech, she lives in Blacksburg, Virginia where she teaches writing, and works as the poetry editor of the Minnesota Review and the associate editor of Toad.