The Way it Shook Out Today
The great heat etched it’s way into Lexington,
filling up concrete trucks with mohair
trapping us under thick transparent walls
and forcing us to always breathe the same tsp of air all the day
As a reward
The sky was filled with orange creamsicle skyscrapers
That boiled and froze and spewed over the top
of their imaginary glass rims
Tipping over into puddles of cool respite
5 thoughts on "The Way it Shook Out Today"
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What a beautiful and sensory piece. Love
“The great heat etched it’s way into Lexington,
filling up concrete trucks with mohair
trapping us under thick transparent walls…”
and “The sky was filled with orange creamsicle skyscrapers”
Awww! Thank you Shawn!
I really like the crackling sensuousness and textures of all of this. I also like how it’s structured, with “As a reward” almost feeling like the equal sign of an elaborate equation, the fulcrum of some great scale we’re wrapped up in. “forcing us to breath the same tsp of air all day” will probably haunt me as I go groping and staggering out through the heat today. What’s more, this is another exquisite addition to what, if I recall correctly, is quite the suite of similarly sumptuous heat wave poems.
AW! Thank you, Goldie. Love that observation! Could put out a “heat wave” chapbook for sure, couldn’t I?
This could be an ekphrasis for an Impressionist art piece! I love how “as a reward” is left ambiguous as to its relation to the lines above and below it—a brilliant bridge, and a cunning trick of sardonic and sentimental inflection.