“Strangers in a Strange Lawyer’s Home” by Jason McGlone

This solarium could be a craggy
overhang in the desert or a yurt
burning sandalwood inside, plates of rosewater
jellies awaiting us, or a dumpster letting in moonlight
between the cracks in its lid

But it’s just a solarium.
We’re pretty sure we’re here
because we’re not trusted to be anywhere else
in this home, which belongs to our host’s
out-of-town parents
who would not take kindly to our smells
lingering amongst their belongings at all.

We’re outside/in, always outside/in,
streetlights like daytime in the windows
we lay among patio furniture on this plastic grass,
this July Lake Michigan sweat-heat still burning off
past midnight so I sweat awake,
listening to the traffic outside pass, the tires’ white
noise against the pavement humming their brief
tunes over and again. The sky undulates in a wave,
speaking, people probably weren’t meant for this.

Jason McGlone lives a stone’s throw from the Ohio River with his family. He works as a data analyst & visualist, is a recipient of grievous head injuries, and makes music under the name Mourning Oars. His work has appeared in Potluck Magazine. He received his MFA from Queens University of Charlotte in 2006.

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