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The posthumous brilliance of Lewis Meyers

1/15/2026

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Because Lewis Meyers is no longer with us, I thought I'd very briefly stand in for him and offer a sample of his wild brilliance, going at it full throttle. If you like what you see, more is available from his brand-new collection, Field Notes of a Flaneur, just published by Parlor Press in its Free Verse Editions series.

Summer Letters

Tree, the sun’s brainchild.
The caterpillars are crawling to heaven.
The porcupine ate the delectable car tire.
Wind bends the tree. I couldn’t do that.
The black raspberry’s passion for a drop of sunlight.
While I wrote, a butterfly, that critic, rode my wrist.
Brown velvet gown trimmed in yellow with blue polka dots.
A bird squeezed itself through the air.
A bird swallowed space and then exhaled it.
Rain. The saplings. It skins them alive.
A shotgun echoes despairingly from the valley.
Choral mushrooms.
Queen Anne’s lace sweetens wild carrot breath.
The earth’s rigid plates drift below the daisy.
Backgammon on grass, losing every game to ants.
The sun and clouds playing honeymoon bridge.
Creams and lotion. Brushes to apply the lesson.
Like the black lily that comes up year after year despite the hostility of the gardener.
To sleep like an opera star, still singing.
Deplorably rocky meadows.
Toadflax, orange and yellow, opposed to black’s pure repulsion.
The cows’ rustling mouths, but God will scatter their teeth.
The light is too dark for colors to help.
The grape is squashed in bitter prejudice.
Turtlehead, Indian pipe, purple bergamot, heal-all, bull thistle!
The whitewashed wood snaps in exasperation.
Pearly everlasting is my girl.

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