Tonight's Poet Corner: Degrees Of Separation

Degrees Of Separation
by Belinda Roddie

This heat is petulant, personal: Handcrafted,
needle and thread settling steam into yarned
and yawning bones. Not even in my own home

can I avoid the veil, which seals the sweating in,
rather than whistling it out with a funeral tune.

As I walk alone on the curb
that locks teeth with Fifth and Thirteenth Square, I'm
reminded of when my mother melted

in front of me, as the sun revealed its full head of hair.
She revealed my new reflection in her puddled face,
and that was when I learned my eyes swallowed stars.

Not the hottest ones, but the ones that were already
dead, since the dying scream loudest, burn brightest,
laugh hardest, and tell the absolute worst jokes.

This month, I'll break my jaw on cinder blocks,
holding up the scorched carcass of my father's
Jaguar: defanged long ago, worthless in this swell
of disenchanted summer night.

Next time the heat waves at me, I'll spit directly
in its eye, then shave the sun's crown while it's sleeping,

so that it can't look at itself in the oceanic mirror when
it wakes up again in the soggy, half-hearted morning.