Confluence

–1933

Afternoon heat with mosquitos in every small, shady spot,
she and Dete headed to swim where the creek meets the Little Scioto,
down by Bobwhite Hollow and out past old Wheeler’s Millhouse.
Modest black swimsuits with no frills to speak of, they’d worked long and hard for the 
store-bought contraptions with worsted wool and a mermaid-stamped tag.
Such an extravagance, weren’t they so fancy, didn’t their calluses
spark to the chill of the water as they giggled and splashed in their secret
world with the warblers and wrens their sweet stalwart companions and guardians.
But up around a subtle bend, those hot, ornery boys,
they were hopping in and, would you believe, were just naked as jays.
All dingles and dangles, with muscles ripe from the hogs and the hay.
They would swear later on that they had no idea that the girls were right there.
Just funning and sunning, a lark and a dare, not meaning to make
a show of themselves, not meaning to scare the birds all away.

Jennifer Schomburg Kanke lives in Tallahassee, Florida, where she edits confidential documents for the government. Her work has recently appeared in New Ohio Review, Nimrod, Massachusetts Review, and Salamander. Her zine about her experiences with ovarian cancer is available from Rinky Dink Press. She serves as instructional support for Annie Finch’s self-paced course in metrical poetry, A Poet’s Ear, available at www.poetrywitch.org which is open to all poets who identify as women and gender nonconforming.

Published February 7 2022