Hot, Hot Summer

by Linda Rodriguez

It's the first of September, but it still feels like August, and that's gone on so long that my eyes are permanently raw from sun and heat and truly excessive humidity. This photo is me at sixteen in my senior play, Li'l Abner, playing Moonbeam McSwine, a sultry woman whose way of dealing with the heat of summer was just to give in to it--and to every man who came along. So it seemed like a good choice for this post all about summer heat and how it makes us feel lazy and... decadent.

Here's a poem I wrote about summer heat and how it can turn good girls (and women) bad--at least in their minds and imaginations.

BLAME IT ON SUMMER

that I smile too widely,

grinning really, and laugh

too loud and often; that I walk

with spring and sensual sway;

that I stretch myself and twist

like a cat

baking in the backyard

brightness; that my brain is sun-bleached,

all rule and thought boiled away, leaving

only sensory steam;

that my feverish eyes see strange dancing

flames in afternoon shadows

along the sides of streets and Bedouin oases, fragrant

with dates and goats and acrid desert waters,

in every suburban garden we pass

while you argue and drive

and I stare, heavy-brained with heat

and too aware of my own body

and every other;

that I take a lover,

brazenly, crazily,

too sun-stupid to be careful,

in my dreams.

Published in Heart's Migration (Tia Chucha Press, 2009)