Natalie

16

August, August

I wonder what the children below the equator
would say to the those above
about the month of August.
Perhaps they would sneer
at the northerner’s sprinkler systems
and popsicle sticks
and laugh at their cotton clothes
and open toed espadrilles.

Because where they were sitting,
rain was solidified atop cement
and swingsets were left
for the wind to play with.

The southern children bow their heads
to an August who appears
so august on his throne,
cushioned by mink fur
and the leather from yesterday’s killing.
He feasts on the metallic tang of opulence.

This is the August whose dominion
wrinkles like dried apricots
and glimmers like plywood.
Bees do not suckle or pollinate
in this feverish land.

Instead, they venture
to the hydrangeas
above the equator
where August morphs into
“happiness happens” month;
where plums are stewed in milk
and limbs are exposed to dry.

August is still august,
wearing his pastel-colored crown,
dancing to the saxophone
and drinking in the delights
of hazelnut macarons
and triangular-shaped sandwiches.

I dance too,
beneath the silver dollar sun,
laughing with my bare skin
and crying for the children in the South.
But they’ll dance too in their February.