From WTP Vol. VI #3

The Clutch
By stephanie roberts

Headphoned, he pushed the mower following the game
couch pleasure held in abeyance to the knuckle-crack of rain.
Duty pitched delight in clover levelled—carpet and diamond
centerpiece to her garden’s linden-day fragrance of rose and vine.

Today, she eyed him from the deck, but preferred walking behind
the reel mower’s spiral fields grass, like quick scissors.
From a defense position and rear approach, the scene catches
work pants fraying at the hem beneath a sweet clench of rump.

He manned the hot corners of their together—a great blue heron:
height folded away neat, on reedy legs, icy concentration,
slow and on-the-kill threading past any hinderance of lily pads;
thirsty work stalls the cut near the Limelight hydrangea.

Then she knew the game was tight—the tying run on third?
Melky Cabrera in the clutch to keep the win alive?
Some asked how she stood it—this long, and so boring.
She smiled, closed lips, the first hint of rain–a thinking game.

stephanie roberts has poetry featured or forthcoming, in periodicals, in North America and Europe, including Atlanta Review, Arcturus, Crannóg Magazine, The Stockholm Review of Literature, Occulum, and elsewhere. A 2018 Pushcart Prize nominee, she has also garnered finalist honors with the Eyewear Publishing LTD Fortnight Prize, Anomalous Press Open Reading, and the 2016 Causeway Lit Fall Poetry Contest.