“Summer” by Richard Hartman

         "Summer"

The sun will bake
the ugliness
from your face,
the sin from your
lips.

It's hot gravel,
a cemetery
in a corn field,
the collapsed roof
of a church, a centerfold
stapled 
to a barn door.

Richard Hartman is a writer and visual artist. He has an MFA from Wichita State University. He has always lived in the Midwest but hopes to escape someday.