On summer & sea-sickness

June

listing people you love listing people you could love

laying stagnant on sweating mattresses and not moving for days

love songs on angel-hood. calling her to cry

about our childhood, our beauty, wallowing . kissing strawberry bite marks like

they might ever be lips! love letters and pheromones

writing to boys you’ll never meet. planning evildoings, rotting within

too much coffee cake. too much wine

July

white cotton dresses on thorny first dates

staining your linen with nose-blood and toothpaste. missing simpler times

and touching skin, silent, faces turned up towards the sky

listening to the record your sweet sixteen gave you

wearing the bracelet your first girlfriend made

honey-soaked / oily / buttered. lard

hidden anchovies —— sicilian summertime —— mango trees

the wedding in italy you went to when you were three

how all the stray cats wound round at your knee

sizzling meat and old fourth of july memories (the country club fireworks from a five mile distance)

August

hot summer nights all tangled in bed. room-temp canned coke

tramodol in lines vicodin and coppola lynch for dessert sleep on the tile

finding your shadow in manic, evil children

planning life through the weight of a shotgun

trying not to vomit from repeated indulgence ignoring invitations

solitude, choking on it

satin underwear on pink shag carpeting. thinking of mother when she was our age

do you think if she went back now she would long for a change?

hot museum entrances where swampy tourists neck

thinking of summer romance, wondering where it went

jazz on the radio, princesses avian on the water, the carnival half-built

stretched out pink, bare skin against checkered sheet cloudless sky

moonshine sunlight

sweat. the sea