SUN HOLDING ME / *image by Amalie Flynn*

Don’t About Not

If I can’t or think
do it like I’m doing now

a beach
sun holding me

I am holding space
not space itself

not looking
being

gathering toward me

sun’s filaments

fluidity
is all I need

Mermaid Tavern

A night-wind touching bare backs lying down
and bare arms spooned across my bed, in blue
light dreaming over skin, light-fingered sparks
of seaweed, dendrites rippling through the room.

Scales rubbed against smooth sheets, in silver
puddled water, a smell of open
ocean, roseate tips of waves, our hips’
undulations, in my body’s rhythmic memory.

Emerald Inula

Apples in Schiller’s desk, Balsam of Peru, rockrose,
rose alba, Helichrysum Everlasting, Immortale.
Why can’t this be enough?

ii.

Dried petals staining the pages.
Attar of cells breathing sun.
Flesh never accepting, but aching.

Sam Cherubin

Sam Cherubin's poetry has been published in Perceptions Literary Magazine, Brushfire, Euphony Journal, Green Hills Literary Lantern, Packingtown Review, Old Crow, Wallace Stevens Journal, and Palo Alto Review. He earned a Bachelor of Arts in English from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He works as a director of digital strategy, and enjoys blending humor, empathy, and curiosity to roll out human-centered AI, Virtual and Augmented Reality technologies.