Summer’s hot and so is everybody else

I’ve never tried less to do anything wrong

Wrapped up in the mohair feeling of yesterday

And tomorrow

Or anytime that doesn’t currently exist because 

The present is bleeding and my first aid certificate has lapsed 

You can’t kiss a moment on the knee

Plaster a big bird band aid over the puckered flesh

You can’t kiss a moment and you can’t kiss anyone 

Because the present is bleeding and no one has a compatible blood type  

But believe me we’ve tried

Hooked ourselves up to the emotional drip

Fed the hungry like a horror movie about a vampiric slave

Lapping up droplets from a fresh cut arm 

There’s way too many poems about blood and kissing

You’d think there’d be nothing to say by now

But everyone is shouting in salvation square and

Everyone is confused and dehydrated

Shaking alms cups in their own faces

Dropping coins on the ground and picking them up 

No one’s looking at each other

You can’t look at people in summer because

Everyone turns into their bodies

And we’ve been through this 

People don’t like it when you make each other feel good

Without letting them know

We’ve become so used to receiving information in advance

To be a spectator feels like leaving

Like being left out in the sun too long

Waiting for the hand of god 

To tell you summer’s over

It’s time to take stock of our retina

Find out where we’ve been burned

Eliana Gray

Eliana Gray lives in Ōtepoti. They like queer subtext in everything and not much else. They have words in: SPORT, Landfall, Minarets, Mayhem and others. Their debut collection, Eager to Break (GOK Press) was published in 2019 and in 2020 they were both: writer in residence at Villa Sarkia, Finland; and artist in residence at St Hilda's Collegiate, Ōtepoti.