Joshua St. Claire

Watching for the Longest Day

I get the itch to read Gatsby every year around this time. Those first memories are still so immediate. Lengthening days. Light until 9:30. A 1987 brown Ford Bronco. The heat and the light. The Heat and the Light. A rented white tuxedo. Daisy and Gatsby. Chemistry class unknowns. Nick and Jordan. And all their quadratic formula permutations. Their slopes and interstices. Tom and Myrtle. The burning sundials in the garden. The gauzy women floating over divans in a sea breeze. The spiraling Catherine wheel that goes dark around the hundredth page. A few words scrawled in chalk. The Great Looming Ever-After. And so I beat on and grab my dinged-up, dog-eared copy. My 27th summer as Old Owl Eyes at Gatsby’s place on West Egg.

dawn to dusk
the nine chapters
of a daylily 

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About the Author

Joshua St. Claire is an accountant who works as a finance executive in rural Pennsylvania. His work has been published in several journals, including contemporary haibun online, Mayfly, The Heron’s Nest, and  hedgerow.

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