June Flowers on Main Street
by Emi Gonzalez

The once whitewashed fence
covertly corroded
barely corals the creeping roses
and abundant gardenia

Silently 
tall grasses lie flattened
Suppressed by heavy rain
Surreptitiously covering the barn
that withholds Dickinson’s sawmill

Handwritten notes etched in Polish
Hidden behind the 
meeting of wall and pine floorboard 

Its structure 
shrouded by recovering catmint, 
Foxgloves whispering mam sekret 
to Rose of Sharon 
Black-eyed Susan beckoning to 
blushing begonia

Red rhododendron 
repentant of recouping 
its own secrets 
blowing the cover of
Resurgent hydrangeas 


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Emi Gonzalez is a second-year PhD student in Literature, Criticism, and Textual Studies and Graduate Teaching Associate at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Her research interests are in late nineteenth-early twentieth century Modernist British Literature, the novel, women’s writing, and spatial theory. She has presented several conference papers all over the country, is a published poet and artist, and her poem, “Lines Composed Many Miles From Tucson,” was recently published in the Connecticut Literary Anthology.