Elegant scraps of blue satin,
channels meander through meadows,
In the shadows, violet spills into pools.
The redwing blackbird’s insolent whistle
shames the summer sun with its question.
Sandpipers pace and pause
like absentminded functionaries,
stabbing at the mud again and again:
hunger is a harsh master.
Miriam N. Kotzin teaches creative writing and literature at Drexel University. She is the author of five collections of poetry, most recently, Debris Field (David Robert Books 2017). Her collection of short fiction, Country Music (Spuyten Duyvil Press 2017), joins a novel, The Real Deal (Brick House Press 2012), and a collection of flash fiction, Just Desserts (Star Cloud Press 2010). Her fiction and poetry have been published or are forthcoming in Shenandoah, Boulevard, Smoke Long Quarterly, Eclectica, Mezzo Cammin, Offcourse, and Valparaiso Poetry Review, among other periodicals, and in anthologies. She is a contributing editor of Boulevard.