Summers new skin.

The smell of sun and sweat stuck to your pores like wet tissues
damp and dissolved in the impossible wet.
Bodies of pricking fleshy dunes and hairs stretching their legs
Like spiders or hibernating bears and new born lambs.

Scored like yellow squash in buttery frying pans;
checked boards of chess kings and queens-- exact diamond scratches--
On backs of men drinking the heat like wine and
Absorbing the pinch of pungent grass, broken and bleeding summer.

Tips of crooked fingernails, jagged and dirt stained but still digging
beds of fragrant lavender in all its pale-purple glory.
Bees of flying planes buzzing overhead shaking eardrums with clockwork shudders of slickening shoulder blades.
They carry pieces of lilac and dandelion or daisy powders on hairy bumbling legs.


Bellies full of the hot air and thunderstorming in the distance
thick, pregnant clouds of black and grey ready to send bare toes running for shelter of trees
Arms tangling in fingers and hair and chests heaving without breath as cries of laughter break the silence
(save the lightning and thunder howling as children desperate for attention, recognition, expectation.)

Babies naked, all but dripping sun lotion from their smooth white skin;
flawless as it should be.  This year, the next, for the rest of our days.
Water cool like manna pouring over pudgy fingers sticky with sugary treats in colors that stain cheeks with red or purple paintings.

Peeling noses slick with salty footprints and pieces of jagged quartz or
strong women sinking red and pink toes down deep deep to the cold wet sand.
Always fanning with impatient flicks of thin veiny wrists but
everwanting the sun to bubble their skin and bleach it smooth like lonely desert bones.

A film of deeply recognizable day fallen on a place dark with summer's fleeting.
Bugs of yellow-tailing lights flash like the lighthouse beams; sound and trusting.
People wanting, needing signs in the air or touches of strangers to keep them warm.
A bandage wound tight and healing a thick scar tissue. Some sort of skin to wrap around these days.