this summer we are all siphoning love through biodegradable straws

I studied summer hard the way I'd learned 
eyes on the window, addicted to the familiar hum of concentration and cicadas
the hungry stomachs of clouds, coming and going without apology or sustenance
storms are hardest to love so I traced the stippled storm droplets on window pains and set out a
picnic in the rain
flashes of lights become slow motion disco parties to the tune of ripe red beets getting spritzed in
the produce section at Hyvee where I spent most of the summer looking for the perfect
watermelon because we all want something perfect
saxophone love comes easy in the corridors of downtown
small audience of shih tzus at the musician’s feet
summers telescope into each other on potent copper tone waves & it rains all the time. It never
rains. It's so hot. Our proboscises are quenched with the sodium and sunscreen of
another’s
fraternity brothers play giant games of Jenga® at downtown block parties & I'm checking out this
dead bird pressed fossilized in pavement but don't say anything because people don't feel
like talking about dead birds right now so let’s just keep walking but it'd be great if
someone would go back for a second look—
everyone is getting married because everyone is getting married and it feels good to tie your
something or anything to another like canning the best fruit of summer for winter
tonight’s night is a menagerie of sounds with a stage for each beast to play its set in the allotted
time
I'm already unmoored so I’ll only pretend to untie my boat listen
to the wild call of animals searching for soulmates on the shortest night

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Liana Meffert is a fourth-year medical student at University of Iowa’s Carver College of Medicine. She has previously been awarded an Academy of American Poets Poetry Prize, Stanford’s Irvin David Yalom Literary Award, University of Iowa’s Carol A. Bowman Creative Writing Award, honorable mentions for the William Carlos Williams Poetry Award, and most recently the F. Sean Hodge Prize for Poetry in Medicine. Her work has been published in The Examined Life and The Healing Muse, among others.