On Drying Day
Vincent Hostak
June 7, 2026
We stretch our days across tenterhooks
to keep the year from shrinking.
Behind a linen screen,
blue spruce roots sing: “Let old age come.”
Easy for you to say, my slow growing friend.
As taut as skin on a tambourine,
the sheets are tapped by westerlies.
Still, there are folds ducking the sun,
filled with secrets of grit, tiny canyons
trapping raucous yellow jackets.
Neither of us are certain our clothespins
will hold and the whole thing
won’t fly off in the next gust.
Long creases just flash their smiles.
Peppered up by a breeze, the bedsheets buzz.
Vincent Hostak is a writer and media producer from Texas now living with his family and faithful canine, Lola, near the Front Range of Colorado. His recently published poems are found in the journals The Dewdrop (Vanessa Able, Editor-In-Chief), Sonder Midwest, The Langdon Review of the Arts in Texas, and the Texas Poetry Assignment. His contributions also appear in the anthologies The 30th Annual Poetry Ink Anthology (Moonstone Arts, Philadelphia, 2025), Lone Star Poetry, and The Senior Class-100 Poets on Aging (Lamar University Press, Laurence Musgrove, Editor). His podcast on classic and contemporary poetry, and the novel ways it reaches audiences, relaunches in 2026.
