In Heat

In the park on the first day of summer
a woman is stalking with a limp
in a cardigan, her glasses singeing her face
past dogs fighting and fucking
and pissing gaily in the shade
where students are dreaming with red eyes
and red skin, sinking into their wine glasses
or sinking into the ground.
The dogs bark and leap like lumps
of charcoal into the echo,
hissing of the barbecues
like armies of smoky tambourines
and the dogs are burning,
tattooed men are chewing at their legs,
the housewives yip and skitter
into bunches of daisies.
A hay fevered child rolls sneezing
through a dream of rape seed fields,
in sun-stroke, in sunburnt mercy,
as the men are baring their chests,
as the women are itching at their breasts,
as the dogs are loving endlessly
their scruffy, blunted bitches.
Old women shine like raisins under the trees,
glinting eyes like diamonds, watching the kids
with hunger of marrow and black thoughts,
thoughts of age and hunger, hidden in woodsmoke,
their hands moving like a spell.

As the children wake among the flowers
the park is tumbling in a furnace dream
of sizzling meat and broken guitars,
and their parents are beetroot naked
barking at the sun.