She queues to jump in the swimming hole, swing out on a rope and let go.

She climbs the ladder, preparing to release the miracle in herself for the judgment of her peers.

She’s hormone bravado, lightning in a jar.

Jumping is the heart of everything. Splash is the applause.

Mike’s work has appeared in Mud Season Review, The London Reader, Amsterdam Quarterly, and other magazines, and in Mike’s book, Arranging Deck Chairs on the Titanic, (Rabbit House Press, 2020), political poetry for a post-truth world.