heat – Amanda Salisbury Books & Art

This piece reflects on heat and dried-out red clay, waiting and hoping for rain.

-AS

Still Still

Originally posted on a 6s community, May 31, 2011 at 8:03pm

The cracked red earth stretches out its veins as far as anyone of them can see, and the tallest boy opines that the cracks likely go to the center of the planet. Today the sun is a nuisance unworthy of orbit, hot and nasty and scorching the air itself. One boy kicks up a dirt devil while another flicks a black tick off the toe of his shoe. Swatting absentmindedly with fringy tails, the cows note the odd routines of humankind. No wheat is sweet, no wind is fine, but the plains constrict with the aching and desolate language of unspoken poetry. Together, life squints skyward and wonders what might be possible with a bit of breeze and the beating of a steady come-and-go rain.

This is what one writes when one is addled by heat. Or so I hear.

-AS

Crack an Egg on the Sidewalk but Not for Sizzle

Originally posted on a 6s community, August 1, 2011 at 6:30pm

Flitter, fly away, and flee – that’s all you ever were to me.

Unconvinced, too contrived, too musical, you say?

Then leave me for that, too, hear you now my plea.

Hard to catch, hard to hold, too hard like a mold?

Then why, oh why, do you stay?

Tut, tut, hushabye, drink in sweet lullabies for the mirror so empty and cold.

*If you are somewhere cooler than 107 F, send some dollops of cold, sweet sanity my way, if you please…