- - when;

when you make my knees shake I’ll bite through the orange, rind and all.

when you make my knees shake I’ll tilt my neck back. let go.

rind and all.

little things

to enjoy
the return of
picking out cute knickers
as i dress
in the morning

and all the anticipation
that it
implies.

oh!

Plier

“Pliez! un... deux... trois... Pliez!” said the woman with the tight bun of silver and white hair, black tights and tasseled skirt. She tapped her cane on the wooden floor as she counted and glanced at all the girls in the long, clean mirror as they grasped one hand on the barre and the other arm reached out, long, lean, and fingers delicately separated.

Every girl, in time with the music, slowly bent her knees outward and lowered her body as the woman counted, to the piano music on the record player. “un... deux... trois...” Raising up to the sky. Backs straightened. Necks long. Heads always held high.

“Pliez!”

**

“Like this” she said as she took the next piece of linen from the cabinet. The little girl looked over to her mother and watched as her mother’s hand gently aligned the corners of the napkin and bent it over, creating a crease. Then she bent it the other way, flipped her fingers, and placed it on the gold leaf plate. “It’s easy” she said.

The little girl’s fingers were a little sticky and her nails were uneven and bitten. The dining room table was shiny and smelled of furniture polish. The little girl took a napkin and began creasing and bending. The room was freshly vacuumed and the little dish by the couch was filled with potpourri; it sat on a lace doily. She tried to look poised like her mother, try to cross her legs so that they looked long like her mother’s, tried to caress the linen as her mother had so effortlessly.

“Fold it, baby” her mother said. “Fold it like this.”

**

heat

It’s so hot. It’s the kind of heat that people can’t stop talking about, it’s the only thing that matters. On the radio, at the supermarket, in line at the bank.

It’s so hot your hand gets the best part of the popsicle and the little girls do double dutch on the sidewalks 1-2-3-4. The thoughts are slow and there is that time of day where nothin’ can be done but lay your poor body down, its too hot to make love, gotta love with your eyes instead. And those double dutch girls squeal when the ice cream man comes ringin’ his bell- it’s too hot to think about serious stuff, just decide which rum to put in the mojitos and move your straps to the side so you don’t get white lines on a strawberry tan. Its too hot to do anything in the kitchen but slice sour fruit for the lemonade and open take-out boxes, the chocolate left on the counter has melted and my lip gloss and my motivation.

It’s the kind of heat that makes you paralyzed. Sitting like an ice cream scoop that fell out of the cone, slowly melting and spreading over the ground. In front of the air conditioner. In front of the freezer. Half floating in the cement pool. The nights are sweaty when you wake up in damp sheets and hope there’s a breeze on the front porch, cool glass of water but even the water out of the tap is warm like the streams out of the sprinklers running for the black-eyed susans but mostly the double dutch girls and all the boys are cute because they are deep brown and glistening, in this weather everyone has a subtle southern accent. Let’s go dancing if it dips under 95 on saturday night.