Short St.

By Jason Melvin

Is it done with a wink?
naming a minuscule street
Short.  An afterthought.
A tiny slope that leads
to the neighborhood playground
monkey bars     a row of swings
two concrete basketball courts
two metal slides     one small
one tall     butt-burning in mid-July.
The way the asphalt finish
bubbles up     perfect gooey pimples
waiting for me to poke my finger in
leaving tiny moon craters
crawl to find another to pop
before a friend gets there first.
Opening the fire hydrant
spray arching     us running
the squish of our soaked sneakers
as we laugh through 
the sprinkled rainbows

Jason Melvin is a father, husband, grandfather, high school soccer coach, and metals processing center supervisor, who lives just north of Pittsburgh. Most of his poems come to him while riding his lawnmower around the yard. His work has recently appeared in Sledgehammer, The Spring City, The Front Porch Review, Spillover, Olney, Last Leaves, Orangepeel, Anti-Heroin Chic and Zero Readers, among others.