Matthew Hummer is a writer and teacher living in Pennsylvania. His prose and poetry has been published in a variety of literary journals. Links to his writing and art may be found at: scribenswriting.weebly.com.

The Fair

The carney said guys
stay to work mechanical
over the winter.

He had worked the ride
morning to night—white rabbits
and rampant horses

rotating around
a hub of mirrors. My wife
breast-fed the baby

on a parking lot
curb painted yellow. I pulled
bits of funnel cake

from the paper plate
and fed them to her. The boys
rode the fiberglass

animals circling
like planetarium stars
or goldfish in bags.

She Drove the Minivan

She drove the minivan to soccer
leaving a child and me
on the front step, sun-
warmed. She had painted
her toes here. They stuck
out of her sandals, iridescent:
the top plane of her foot,
criss-crossed with black,
leather straps, was still
nut-brown like the wild
rabbit born beneath
the woodpile pallet.

Lambrusco lips, eyes
like purple coneflowers,
rampant with bees and butter-
flies, keeping weeds
in check with roots that mat
the mulch, as cornfields rattle.