June 15, 2017
I imagine you feeling the heat on your shoulder as you leave your apartment.
Maybe you touch the spot where the sun warms you: two inches above and to the left of your clavicle.
My neighbors planted their tulips in March—I don’t know why I didn’t tell you—and this week the buds opened wide, became another sort of flower entirely.
In the afternoons the humid air splits and it rains and rains.
I can see the bridge in the distance from my window, the steam rising from the park underneath, but the obscuring trees swell thicker with the changing season as each day passes.
Soon all I will see is green.
On the other side of the window, the poem today says I don’t wonder where you are anymore.
My Naomi. You’re right.
It’s time for me to go outside
The Naomi Letters is a collection of epistles written from the speaker to Naomi, the woman she loves. The poems’ date-titles track the progression of their relationship, and “June 15, 2017” comes from the very end of the book, as the speaker looks outward towards new possibilities.
Pittsburgh Quarterly is now accepting submissions for its online poetry feature. PQ Poem is seeking poetry from local, national and international poets that highlight a strong voice and good use of imagery, among other criteria. To have your work featured, send up to three previously unpublished poems in Word or PDF format as well as a brief bio to pittsburghquarterlymag@gmail.com. Simultaneous submissions are accepted, but if work is accepted elsewhere, please alert us.
Rachel Mennies is the author of The Naomi Letters (BOA Editions, 2021) and The Glad Hand of God Points Backwards (Texas Tech University Press, 2014), winner of the Walt McDonald First-Book Prize in Poetry and finalist for a National Jewish Book Award. Her poems and essays have been published at The Believer, American Poetry Review, Kenyon Review, Poetry Foundation and elsewhere. She serves as the book reviews editor for AGNI and the series editor, since 2016, of the Walt McDonald First-Book Prize in Poetry at Texas Tech University Press. Originally from the Philadelphia area, Mennies currently lives in Chicago, where she works as a writer, editor, and adjunct professor.
