Weather reports 2023

PHOENIX, ARIZONA

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JULY 19

      july the nineteenth
      overnight low temp
      of ninety-seven degrees

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OCTOBER 19

      october nineteenth
      one hundred and three degrees
      climate change is hoax

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NOVEMBER 6

      day before winter
      ninety-three degrees
      summer-autumn in phoenix

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NOVEMBER 8

      dear gods of weather —
      will it ever rain again
      in bone-dry phoenix?

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NOVEMBER 14

      now a week into winter
      high:  eighty-eight  F  degrees
      that’s not fahrenheit

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NOVEMBER 18

      i begged & pleaded
      for rain but now bemoaning
      winter mosquitoes

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DECEMBER 6

      really, december:
      high of eighty-two degrees?
      oh no you didn’t!

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DECEMBER 21

      on midwinter day
      seventy-seven degrees
      a sunburned solstice

* * *

Terri Guillemets

Fading in

i am naked and spinning
unmasked and repenting
wasn’t i just fourteen
mere unwound hours ago
i breathed, i sang
a lyric or two, loudly
in my quiet voice —
cycled through colors
found beautiful hues
my butterfly wings
cripplingly morphed
to chrysalis again
— reflect retread —
growing wisdom in my head
thrust out the blonde hair
and that all the new
is gray matters not —
focus is a summit reached
rock bottom at the top
perimenopausal paradox —
if someone would listen
if anyone would care
from up here or down there
the invisible i have become
could unhide everted —
but what has burned out
is not the heart soul
bones mind or gut but
only the brittle shell
of youth — falling apart
shedding and crumbling
finally wasting far away
leaving a glowing
blossom unsplayed —

Terri Guillemets