Heat climbs up my spine, splitting skin, allowing pinprick droplets to follow each other freely down a river between minimalist adornments. Minimalist, no protest, fluid lines balance black silk sheath gliding over almost existent curves; somewhat Audrey-ish, but I drink chilled blanc, not iced narcissism.

Clouds reflect blue (not azure, not prussian), a hue painted by Midwestern artist; Grant Wood’s mural I used to sit next to in a pulped Parks mortared with words.

Salt licks, kisses sun-burnt lips; an earthy seasoning reminding (almost) of your body after it left me. Humidity curls, lingering, wetting temple strands, neck hairs; love affairs produce this much steam wintering in Iowa when everything goes frozen-white, clinging to glassed walls, struggling not to break as bodies burn (upright) melting, remembering a warmer plain, Spring views on the right.

Lake waters glassy, not even a spit of bluestem blows off in the hinterland; this dug hole a former field, gone gravel, gone mud pit turned over to profit. Baking bathers longing for a sea in the midst of a glacial divide, paying to pretend upon shell-less sands.

Black thatch sticks straight up. A phoenix gone blushing tries to fly off a leathering blade, rolling cuts muscling, moving to a testosterone rhythm. Blazing, parting water; my lungs stop, I part pinked up lips to breathe. Yellow plastic goes flying, dropping (almost) at my feet.

Sun cools under six feet of shadow. The crane’s cry mocks me.

Chiclets, a gleaming row of placed perfection lighting creasing grey eyes. Human collected rain drips on oiled shins; a feathering contact, falters, I bite back a forming verb, trapping it with my tongue as a left hand navigates leg to foot. Shiver shakes my body as a sliver of white mocks me, in your reach, I see tattooed, territory, the lingering imprint of history, metal, rising suns and someone, not me. Pause, a song note held for five beats         ten; I drop our gaze,      burning,         disappearing under a strategic tilt of golden swirls.

Sand cradles my sinking:    head     trunk    limbs             mind(finally);
I close my jade irises; white-hot glare sears under heavy lids, gone code red, dotting shuttered eaves.

waiting

exhaling, these dreams

evaporate

a salty residue remains, ready to wash away when I wake.

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