They were yorking, yorking all
over the city.
Hot like the fourth of July.
The crowd, wild
grassing,
and the night sky bannered and bottered.
The hot hot.
The zipping but not the zippers.
They twobacked
and sometimes three.
Together, then
apart.
We dooglogged out of there,
winged to the max.
Away from
the barbecue, aunties, the river.
Free and freer.
You were not fogdood.
Betwixt boulders and parked cars—
soft soft—you let me.
Starklight, baby.
The rockets come.
The rockets come, oh yeah.
Katherine Gleason’s stories have appeared in Cheap Pop, Derelict Lit, Every Day Fiction, Gone Lawn, Hobart, Juked, Jellyfish Review, Bending Genres, and Menacing Hedge. She’s won first prize in the River Styx/Schlafly Beer Micro-Fiction Contest, garnered an honorable mention from Glimmer Train, and been nominated for a Best of the Net award. Her play “The Toe Incident” won the Christopher Hewitt Award for Drama in 2020.