August Garden

Overgrown,
ravaged with insects, humming
incessant sun,

the lot of it
buckles, sucks, sags and slumps
toward autumn —

all bursting,
come to fruition, seeking divisions
between sex and

sex and death —

breathing
last breaths, heaving its seed
toward next season.

Stephen Jackson [he/him] lives and writes in the Pacific Northwest. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The American Journal of Poetry, Dreams Walking, 50 Haikus, Ghost City Review, Impossible Archetype, The Inflectionist Review, Iō Literary Journal, Neuro Logic, October Hill Magazine, Quince, Stone of Madness Press, and S/WORD, as well as on the International Human Rights Art Festival Publishes platform and in the PoetRhy Garden.