Ode to the tween summers of the late 1970s
Kaila Schwartz
__________
the smells of Coppertone
and calamine lotion
squeezing lemon juice
on our hair to see if
we could make natural highlights
rushing to get cool
by freezing our tongues
the twin popsicles melting
onto our sticky fingers
from the rush and the heat
the goal was to keep them
together as long as possible
never thinking they were meant to be shared
running back and forth
through the sprinkler
feeling slick grass between our toes
if you listened closely
you could hear the grass squeak
welcoming the return of lightning bugs
enchanting humid evenings
filled with the mating songs
of crickets
and then came the sluggish wave
of August complete
with warm pounding rain
the kind we could wash our hair in
and we did
__________
Kalia Schwartz runs an award-winning high school theatre program in the San Francisco Bay Area where she has spent the past 24 years with her spouse and their kitty overlords. Her work can be seen in Hippocrates Awards Anthology 2020, Ekphrastic Review, Moss Piglet, issue 2 of Waffle Fried, and in THE YELLING CONTINUES, a Procrastinating Writers United Anthology.
__________
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Posted in Retro Summer and tagged in #boudin, #poetry, Poetry