Inscape 04 FINAL - Pasadena City College

M ARILY N B RADFORD-EV ANS L ISA K ELLY
Hot San Joaquin Summers
Hot San Joaquin summers, long passed by,
we looked forward to your coming.
Your days were blissfully warm extending into night.
Oh! summer, what wonders you did bring;
Muscat grapes, succulent watermelon off the vine,
apricots so ripe and sweet.
Those golden sunflowers that grew taller than
our heads
and leaned over smiling down into our little
grinning faces.
The yellow poppies that glisten on the hillsides,
and wild flowers bent gleefully in the
summer’s breeze.
The hot ground baked our running feet,
and turned our brown bodies even blacker.
In the summer heat, we played.
Mystical heat waves danced across the roads,
but mulberry and peach trees offered shade
while we sucked nectar so sweet, and juices
ran down our arms.
As children, we thought your stay was not too long.
Oh! summer, you eased into fall with amber leaves.
Then came winter, harsh and cold.
Spring, we welcomed,
but summer, your days were the best of all.
Chemical Sadness
To my husband
It’s a different kind of sadness–
body creaking, groaning, seething
under the weight of super-hormones:
the injectable gods of fertility.
Ovaries ache, eggs mature, sperm line up
while our minds are reeling.
I shiver and shudder
through this continual shifting
of moods and tones, trying
yoga, meditation, breathing–still,
the relentless chemicals oozing, mixing, burning,
but never soothing.
Denied the optimism of alcohol or coffee,
I yearn for sleep.
It’s a different kind of sadness,
for our usual selves are buried within it,
drunk on conversation with my
hormone-pumped body,
stifled by secret fears,
but held together with the glue
of un-used-up hope.
Life’s cruel mysteries continue.
Together, we’ll see.
INSCAPE • 72 INSCAPE • 73