Lola In Bloom

small children in the sun
-----------------------------

junebug, blonde baby of sun
hot sweet hair melting in the
afternoon like cotton candy
stuck to your bare brown
shoulders,

one finger absentmindedly stuck
deep inside your ear, worming
and jiving the wad also melting
in the sun,

everything melts in this sun.

you stab the grass blades at
the melting underbelly of a snail,
catching dinner;
i'm pretending to sweep but i'm
watching you,

everything you do, you swam
from my cells and my soul
flopped out my vagina like
a great fat fish into water,
no less, water baby, you

tore me apart when you were born.

putting myself back together
feels so good, the greatest pleasure
of my life, to be reinvented by
you two, irish french southern
western mutt babies grown
as beautiful as anything,

as anything could ever be,
i watch you but you think
i'm sweeping, you furrow
those dusty eyebrows and
lick your own palms,
i have no idea what's there

but it tastes very sweet.

-maggie may ethridge