Blazing
by Jennifer Luckenbill
At this point in the summer,
we can’t say anything else but
it’s hot, too hot. We all know it,
but we pant it anyway; our bodies are
reduced to sweat-producing machines,
and words don’t linger on hot
tongues. The pool is so warm
it’s like swimming in human soup;
catch a mouthful, and you feel a bit
cannibalistic. I’m tempted to test
the fry-an-egg-on-the-sidewalk
theory, but instead I wait until evening
to plant seeds in pots, and hope they
survive the blazing saharan concrete
of the porch. Later, I think about
sneaking outside to sing them to sleep.
Even in the faux cool of air conditioning
and ceiling fans, the heat’s gone to my head.
Jennifer Luckenbill is a recent Library Science graduate in search of a new life, which will include more writing. She writes to make sense of her life and because she’s had a love affair with words for as long as she can remember.
