I’m not writing with sunglasses on. I need the shrill brightness to unsettle me. Summer is threaded through with a sense of euphoric instability that is largely ignored. Oh, it’s the season of joy! Balmy weather, unruly children streaking through fountains in an impending drought, splitting skin cells in sharp sunlight. All the promise of freedom from winter’s oppression is finally delivered if you are able to accept it and to put aside the doom for your possible enjoyment.
I have this one miraculous body and it is fiercely sensitive to temperature extremes. The heat makes me uncomfortable. Sets my very skin on edge, the folds of it pierced with an itch that cannot be scratched out. I cannot settle when the city is cooking at body temp. I suppose I enjoy the summer, or at least enjoy other’s enjoyment of it. Makes me happy to see people I love grinning big, tanned fingers reaching for another slice of seedless watermelon. Nature gets so big and bold in the long productive days but it also bites the moment you slow down to observe it.
It’s hard to pull myself free from the undercurrent of so many summers spent hiding in cool dry places, complacent in my spud-like stillness. The throughline of my body is a jagged topography of past misery. Sitting in the kiddy pool of depression in a high July is a stark contrast that is difficult to forget. These poems are about this difficult relationship to the summer season and the joy it’s meant to spark in me. They’re a little bleak but they make me feel hopeful too that I can stare down the sun and make peace with my blindness.
Florida Orange
a fragile thing like summer happiness— how much of you is propped up by sunlight steeping your skin? my sweet steady domino, your fall will be swallowed by the clamor of boys on boats pressing love like citrus into a miserable rind
Narcissus at the river
narcissus at the river but it’s all dried up— there’s a dam up the road past the freeway ‘top a bulldozed home he looks and looks and looks and the cracked earth looks back there is nothing to love in this reflection. but it is true enough to be sexy
Roadside detritus tries out a pick-up line
hello, do you come here to soften? I am pretty fruit in the hot sun! my walls are dissolved I cannot protect myself dig in, though you find me ugly I just need to be torn apart your fingers look sweet, slicked by me
Anthill
hate dense like a peach pit sinking hot in the gut summer’s knife cuts out. magnified like marching ants, the curious child sets the meaning on fire. I am moving on or just giving up
Down the Cape
Everyone is weekending— (I can’t afford my dinner) I know it’s not romantic But I hunger for love And it’s gone away for the month At someone’s mom’s aunt’s Hand-me-down cabin, but here The city is kinetic Meaning it smells like piss. I float away; I starve on summer’s fumes; I’m happy to hear about your vacation
equatorial boston
i leave the windows open so that the wind might climb through, gangly-limbed, and stir the leaves of my plants to soft song, erratic dance in silence, i suffer the hot wet air, knowing the broad-leafed joy on the skin of my children will kiss me back when my lips find themselves thirsty
jw