Poetry: Claire Contreras
Summer Simmer
Summer sinks through the brows
and drips into the watering hole
where the eyes meet
Like someone put a cigarette out
in the middle of everyone’s faces.
These heavy, contorted body cloths
at the tips of limp bodies
bleeding out their sweat
Into cotton and nylon
like melting candles.
Conversations carry on
like forgotten piano keys
Everything is quiet
and cooking.
Fingers rummage through
dumpsters at 1 AM.
The yuppies dream
about nothing
in their fridge cool
air-conditioned suburbs.
Fans drown the humid night
with the dizzy hum of
a thousand tiny mosquitoes
flapping their
itch-infested wings.
After Klass
everytime i look at you
saying goodbye- your husky hands
wrapped around the handlebars,
orange head balancing on
your right shoulder.
someone lights a match on the tricky
corner of our heliconia lips
your smile climbs the street lights-
almost taking off down the cosmic underpass
to a consternation constellation
where we are maybe thinking together
or probing what the language
of all these airborne grins
and where their curiosities
go wunce we have both
vanished.