My Cardboard Balcony

A Dip In The Pool by Belinda Roddie A dip in the pool after such a heat wave with my wife and cousin, and later, the Farmer's Market with Mom was a treat, with hummus and sweet pulled pork to savor. Family time just simply can't be beat - at least, not when it comes to my own kin, who know how to drink, be merry, and eat without creating a fuss, brawl, or din. The wind now picks up, at long last, outside, cooling the condo where my lovely sits, watching Youtube while our cat comes alive trying to kill a feather toy. While its warm face recedes, the sun just looks askant, but the moon knows how to keep things pleasant.

Life Hacks by Belinda Roddie I've cut corners an awful lot, but only because I'm no good at snipping between the lines, and I'm clumsy enough to cut myself with scissors rather than cut paper with 'em. I've skipped out on dance lessons but can manage to stay on rhythm. I never learned social norms, yet the code switching is as real as flicking a lightswitch at a bored high schooler's bedroom rave. And I'm pretty sure that wooing the fairer sex was never a class I took before, during, or after college, but the lady I have slung across my arm is sure attractive, and wicked smart to boot. I can switch accents on a whim, even if I can only trick the gullible. My jokes are funny to those with minds already dredged with gutter water. And once the rain's cleared, I'll teach you how to fake sunshine. After all, it's one of the main reasons I'm alive: To pretend that everything's warm, and everything's steady, ...

Lyrical Inversion by Belinda Roddie Broadway lies down on the lamb, who squeaks beneath its asphaltian girth. Still, its innocence is preserved through fossil fuels and vinyl records and Peter Gabriel's guttural eulogies over a loudspeaker and a dust cloud and a carpet full of crawlers. We gotta get out to get in, boys.

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...