invitation

teal thing that flickers

on the roadside

this artificial day

no season beginning

or ending, a burst of wind

to scrub the earth

I know there is some thing

I have failed to observe

for several days

I won’t know what

personal life

it’s hard to think

when they’re drilling upstairs

slightly in the next room

then right up close

for an hour I can taste it

bruising the sky

unusual clouds

in November I think love

I think touching everything

I think softly about weather balloons

their individual, doomed arcs

through the cumulonimbus

my social life begins in the throat

a theater extending into the atmosphere

flickering or elastic, complex

and unable to reach you

something in the water is tender

across the continent

I send you pictures of unusual clouds

I am trying

to enter your atmosphere

Hanna Shea is a writer and editor living in Western Massachusetts. Her work has appeared in Sixth Finch, Big Lucks, Salt Hill and elsewhere. She is the co-editor of the lit journal COVER.