Summer with my Mother

She tells me to come back,
back into the rubbery shade,
that I'll be burnt soon
and won't know freckle from skin.

She seeps in the shade and
when she sweats, you can smell
the milk from her pores.

She keeps her sun glasses
trained on me and only adjusts
when the shadows recede
exposing her thin white feet,
to the consequence of sunlight.

At night she's an unnatural
moon, buffed to an indigo,
too bare and clear like
peeled skin from my
blistered shoulders,

like everything the sun
should shed off.

Painting

Painting your walls
I smelled the semisweet paint chip
and found I was missing.

What color am I? You say I'm
a mulberry sky.

I tell you,
sunflower works best
with wanderers - it brings out
the deeds in their eyes.

I thought I could
work your walls like clay,
try and sculpt out the freckles
because the sun hurts too much.

You're wrong - I'm not a sky.

I am a storm dancing in the deep
end of a tea cup.

I painted something else that day.
You against me.

Berry Picking

The mosquitoes

flock to the chalky

sweat from the children’s

blue hands.

The children do more

thinking than picking.

We’ll be burnt before

the baskets fill.

I’m surprised –

the vines, heavy-low,

dispense and bloom and

the berries don’t hide.

The children eat them

from the ground. They dimple

at the dirt and juice,

grin blue, seedy teeth.

The children flush,

and won’t leave the

baskets alone, as

I drive away.