Poetry by K.T. Slattery

           Tim J Keegan CC




Between the Last Bell of the Summer and the First Bell of the Fall

Too hot to do anything but swim
Sticky, suffocating, Mississippi heat
Marco
            -Polo
Marco
            -Polo
We ALL played 
Before cliques 
Before hormones
Marco
               Polo
Fish Out of Water!
You’re it!

Though we did not want to get caught
Didn’t we all really want to be Marco? 
Eyes closed
Flailing about
All in the safe and secure realm 
Of the shallow end


​

K.T. Slattery was born in Memphis, Tennessee, and grew up just across the state line in Mississippi. A graduate of Spring Hill College in Mobile, Alabama, she now lives in the West of Ireland with her husband and an ever-increasing amount of rescue pets. Her poetry and prose have been published in Ropes Literary Journal, Nightingale and Sparrow, The Siren’s Call, Three Drops from a Cauldron, Planet in Peril Anthology, The Blue Nib, Impspired, The Wellington Street Review, Analogies and Allegories, and Streetcake. She was shortlisted for the 2019 Nightingale and Sparrow Chapbook Competition and has was longlisted for the 2018 and 2019 Over the Edge New Writer of the Year. Most recently she received a special mention in the 2020 Desmond O’Grady Poetry Competition.

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