Late Afternoon Farm: August by H. Lee Coakley

There is only the
looking glass pond
on the far edge of the street,

the one that we rupture with our
parched, heaving bodies
and rise up, gasping, from

a day spent
crouching & carrying,
cultivating what greens, what
passes for knowledge
in these dense parts.

We are still
mostly young.

As the cicadas hum
their live wire, we run barefoot
along the fence,

pinching the ends of
honeysuckle, praying for a
light touch - one that grants an

impossibly small drop
of golden ambrosia
on our tongue. A reminder

of how hard it is we work
to squeeze the sweetness
out of anything.



H. Lee Coakley (they/she) is a Queer poet & nutritional healer currently based in Brooklyn, NY. Their work has been featured in The Lavender Review, Utterance Journal, The Voices Project, Blueshift Anthology and The Mad Farmer Reading Series.