It's very, very cold in Germany

Humid Day - They only talk about the weather 40 x 30 cm

HOT CITY

Heat in any urban setting tends to remind

me of the day a trio of total strangers 

wanted me dead, or said they did—I was walking down

a Berkeley street, three women strutting

in my direction as if they’d just emerged

from the OK Corral, spoiling for a fight, one saying

to her pardners—twice,

in case I didn’t hear the first time—“Good

day to kill a man, don’t you think?”

I’ve never believed anything more in my life.

It’s not only the heat. There’s a suggestion

of indecent exposure in the air. On the doorstep

of a neighborhood youth hostel

lush cabbage roses, sated with

light, nod off like junkies.

Things that didn’t have

an odor before

have one now, multiplied x

number of times, some even taking on

elements of dreamlife. Reminds me of

a dream I once had— I’m standing in a corner

of a dance studio (New York City

I think or Chicago) my nose

twitchy with the perfume and sweat rising

from a young dancer’s skin as she stretches

into an arabesque, holds it, an arrow of desire,

her whole body vibrating slowly. The choreographer

admonishes her to stop moving. “I can’t,” she says

through clenched teeth, “it’s so fucking hot, I’m

so hot, “—then I woke up to

a voice on the BBC World Service saying,

“…after which the organism grew and multiplied.”

The Loving Spoonful - Summer in the City