the Carolinas sweat in the summer,
swamps seep ******* humid heat
and the trees bleed hot sap into
air thick as tomato soup.
Pickens County, 1962 -
Huck Frank buys a slushy machine,
makes a sign, puts it in the window
of his store to bring in business,
the first of its kind in their town,
but not even the newfangled drinks
down at Frank’s are enough to keep people
cool and draw them out from their homes
where they’re starting to put
AC units through their windows.
a pudgy boy is no more than ten,
and he lies in the bathroom and
presses his back to the green and yellow tiling -
they could never afford the carpet craze -
and tries to
selfishly steal at the stone’s cold
and hold it within himself.
his mama finds him there and laughs
and packs ice water and cheese and peaches and
takes him up to Table Rock, his favorite,
walks him round and round and round it
and talks about buying air conditioning,
putting units through their windows.
and he loves his mama, loves her dearly,
but he cannot wait until he’s
old enough to take himself there,
to stare freely at the trees
as long as he likes, to melt
alone in the sun as it hangs
in the sky like a fat ripe orange
and then he'll stop at Frank’s
on the way home
to get his and Mama’s favorite candy -
or maybe with a girl, a boy,
a body with a hand that wants to
hold his like he wants to hold theirs,
maybe with a pretty face like
Sammy Rigby, Leslie Parker,
someone to be sweaty with
in summer months
like how other kids will go out to
the public pools, swim laps and splash,
sit out on porches, in the grass,
lick ice cream running down their wrists
but he is soft,
soft-stomached, soft-voiced, soft-handed,
too soft in the eyes of other children
to attract any sort of kind attention
and he has never had a birthday party
as an August baby.
he loves his mama, loves her dearly,
but wishes that the hand holding his
could belong to someone else
just once
(he regrets this once
his mama’s passed,
wishes he was ten and standing
at Table Rock with her forever,
listening to the price of AC,
but there are
twenty more years to go
or so
before then.)