May 2012
packing blows
I get it. It’s Memorial Day and you want to show your patriotism by setting off some fireworks. It’s the American way, I get it! But could you have maybe gotten some less-flaccid sounding rockets? That was just embarrassing.
Summer
Summer is a throwback. We grew up on sexism and hip-hop. I remember the year of the Air Force Ones. Booty shorts and white Ts. I’d rock my sweats with the left pant-leg rolled up mid-calf. The man in the pool had dreds down to his elbows. Remember how we taught the whole middle school how to booty drop… before the age of youtube? I wore my Yankee hat on a tilt the summer everyone started wearing blue eye-shadow. Everything was “dumb crazy.” My hair was long and always braided. When one of the block boys told me he was gonna be my ‘baby daddy’ I stole his bike and rode to the bodega for an ice cream. Some shit… well, some shit never changes. Summer is the pigeon-park where my first kiss was a black eye to the pavement. Summer is the time I peed on myself from laughing at Victoria’s attempts to Ciara. Summer is me busting my ass dancing to James Brown in the kitchen. It was a month after high school graduation when a boy bruised my body for the first time. Summer always left some kind of a mark. Upstate with a blunt on the tip of the dock at 3am. We thought the stars’ reflections were cop-lights. Tragic city kids. Goddamn I don’t think I’ll ever stop laughing at that. I don’t think I’ll ever stop laughing.
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