One Hot Day, poetry

Revised Edition: LukivPress (Canada), 2021.

Previously published as Her Story, a collection (Poetry of the People, USA, 2003).

An excerpt

The Kitten

A blonde girl

Exhales mist

Into the night.

Her eyelashes are wet;

She wipes her cheeks dry,

But she wears no makeup:

She is too young for that.

She calls again

Into every dark space,

Tree, and bush,

Into every molecule

For her kitten.

A car rattles past;

Her brother should not have

Left the porch door open

Three nights ago!

She bites down hard.

Her mother,

At the kitchen window,

Shrugs her shoulders

And smiles between

Peach-coloured curtains.

The blonde girl calls out,

More weakly,

Under the yet-barren

Mountain ash

And along the mucky trail

That weaves between

Pussy willows

To the lane.

At the lane she turns to

Glance at the roof,

Searching for a kitten-silhouette

In moonlight.

She ignores her mother's

Frown,

And later, she cries

Herself to sleep

In her hard bed;

She bites down often

And snores.

In the morning

She glares at herself

In the mirror.

She locks the bathroom door,

Shutting out her brother,

Her mother, too.

Today she will wear

Mascara,

Even if her brother laughs

Or her mother disapproves.

She is unskilled

With the little brush.

Her hand shakes,

But she is a determined

Young lady

Today.

The author

Dan Lukiv is a poet, novelist, columnist, short story and article writer, and independent education researcher (hermeneutic phenomenology). His creative writing has appeared in 19 countries. Recently, he has been experimenting with temporal shifts and narrative strings in his haiku and senryu.