It’s so hot my stomach hurts I think I’ll head to the Speedway for a $.69 Any-Size Slushed Drink

I’ve seen lit up apartment insides, bright as human hearts, ladies’ feet dangling from couches, 20 under 40 New Yorker specials dangling from long and gripping hands on the couches. I’ve seen the people dancing, man and his fiancé to the blues tunes that pop like periscopes out from the sidewalks of my city street. But I haven’t seen the dancing. I only wished I had, wished I had when I saw intercourse, an uproar of intercourse in bedrooms without blinds, children banging pots against pans. But I haven’t. But I have seen shirtlessness. A bounty of shirtlessness parading about dens and cracked pantry slats. I’ve seen the congregation of dogs and their owners, big dogs and old dogs that tongue and owners who laugh guardedly and hold their big dogs close as unopened love letters. I’ve barged in on the congregations, dogless, and have pressed on, resolutely, knowing the stares of the species and hearing the tongues lapping at the hot air and the smell of me. I’ve seen children’s bucolic chalkwork drawings fade, I’ve seen stair-sitters learn to chain smoke without learning, I’ve seen distant siren Speedways full of slush and processed foods not bothering to call out, knowing enough to know that I will be there, I sing my own siren song, it goes like this.