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Summer 2010

New Poetry

by Michael Hazani and Travis Lund

Mirror in Yellow Flowers by Sarah Stinnett

City Rains

by Travis Lund

Not for here the gentle sweep across a flat expanse

Over Kansas or Iowa

Closer, so the crops will grow.

No ominous massing of

Cumulonimbic pillars, arched and huge behind the mountain

While a shaman gestures with a staff to bring them

Rain comes to the city tainted.

Melancholy as an Eighteenth-century

Poet seated on some lonely hill in England or France

Penning strictly metered lines about love unrequited

Or lost to the grave.

Pellets of water sweep like Napoleonic armies

Through the streets and hammer the buildings

A great, disorganized percussion, smelling vaguely of

Exhaust fumes and sweat and the grit of sidewalks.

That would accumulate where the streets were cracked or pitted.

This afternoon I sit by the window and gaze out

At the storm, grateful I have no need to go outside.

I remember as a child they were things of mythic intensity.

Beautiful and a little bit frightening

Pregnant with a near future of splashing through massive puddles

Now, I always carry an umbrella.

Worried over arriving somewhere

Soaking wet and without a towel.

Summersong

by Michael Hazani

Summer steamed with swirling colors

Outside the room that we called home

Inside, the twelve inch television

Projected shades of monochrome

Outside the traffic overpowered

Every song of every bird

Inside, we drenched ourselves in silence

Dreamt of sounds we never heard

In the church they gave communion

In the synagogues they prayed

But you and I were playing Eden

On the leafy blanket that we’d laid–

Summer came and summer passed,

No seasoned love is made to last;

The last and least of who we were

Is drifting, leaf-like, everywhere.

Michael Hazani is attending his final year at Berklee. A few of his favorite things are: writing, biking, Skittles, and chasing dreams.  Travis Lund currently studies at Berklee, and this is his first work featured in FUSION.  Sarah Stinnett’s photograph “Abstract Lights” was featured in the magazine in 2009; she also currently studies at Berklee.