Heat

I understand you don’t like talking sex and indoor games

when the Sun is high and the winds take on

the warmth of a kiss. Everything takes the extreme nowadays;

it’s no longer the luxury of race, religion, and politics.

But I’m bored because there’s nothing else to talk about

when the heat is high and my lips crave yours.

 

Our kids are in school learning new ways to take

more from the world. Do you wonder what life would

be in a century or two? There’ll be fires, floods,

droughts, and pandemics . . . oh, I forgot, you dread bad news.

You think there’ll be more love if we hope more.

 

We walk around and talk about paradise whenever we want;

I try to laugh loud more every time my mind

wanders away from the lair of a world beyond love.

But the heat is on and I’ve got no way

 

of looking away from sex, and the heat is much

and we’re afraid our bodies would rain heavily again

and the bed would be soaked and you don’t like that.

 

So, we sit out under the almond fanning our faces,

giggling the way foes feign smiles, thinking more of heaven

 

than what we feel now and will ever have. Earth.

Author: Tim Fab-Eme

Poetry Editor

Tim Fab-Eme is an engineer and poet who experiments with poetic forms on environmental and social justice themes. He’s the Issue 7 poetry editor of Reckoning: Creative Writing on Environmental Justice, and Cove Park’s 2022 funded writer-in-residence on climate action. Tim loves exploring nature, gardening, and fishing in the mangrove swamps of his island home, Egun-Okom (Ogonokom). His work has appeared in The Malahat Review, The Fiddlehead, Magma, New Welsh Reader, About Place Journal, Reckoning: Creative Writing on Environmental Justice, Channel: Ireland’s Environmental Literary Journal; apt, Planet in Crisis Anthology, Deep Wild Journal: Writing from the Backcountry, Land and Territory Anthology, Delmarva Review, FIYAH, The Future of Black: An Afrofuturism & Black Comics Poetry Anthology, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, FU Review, The Maine Review, etc. His other projects center on the lore, myth, and experiences of marginalized folks and communities.

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