The document describes a summer day when the author was sixteen years old. It recalls swimming at a pool with friends, sunbathing, dancing to music, and sharing cotton candy and root beer. The teenagers spread blankets in the grass, listened to the radio while applying baby oil and iodine to sunburned skin. They glanced through a chain link fence at the world outside their summer retreat.
The document describes a summer day when the author was sixteen years old. It recalls swimming at a pool with friends, sunbathing, dancing to music, and sharing cotton candy and root beer. The teenagers spread blankets in the grass, listened to the radio while applying baby oil and iodine to sunburned skin. They glanced through a chain link fence at the world outside their summer retreat.
The document describes a summer day when the author was sixteen years old. It recalls swimming at a pool with friends, sunbathing, dancing to music, and sharing cotton candy and root beer. The teenagers spread blankets in the grass, listened to the radio while applying baby oil and iodine to sunburned skin. They glanced through a chain link fence at the world outside their summer retreat.
The document describes a summer day when the author was sixteen years old. It recalls swimming at a pool with friends, sunbathing, dancing to music, and sharing cotton candy and root beer. The teenagers spread blankets in the grass, listened to the radio while applying baby oil and iodine to sunburned skin. They glanced through a chain link fence at the world outside their summer retreat.
its slide a silver afterthought down which we plunged, screaming, into a mirage of bubbles. We did not exist beyond the gaze of a boy. Shaking water off our limbs, we lifted up from ladder rungs across the fern-cool lip of rim. Afternoon. Oiled and sated, we sunbathed, rose and paraded the concrete, danced to the low beat of "Duke of Earl". Past cherry colas, hot-dogs, Dreamsicles, we came to the counter where bees staggered into root beer cups and drowned. We gobbled cotton candy torches, sweet as furtive kisses, shared on benches beneath summer shadows. Cherry. Elm. Sycamore. We spread our chenille blankets across grass, pressed radios to our ears, mouthing the old words, then loosened thin bikini straps and rubbed baby oil with iodine across sunburned shoulders, tossing a glance through the chain link at an improbable world.
The Partial Explanation
Seems like a long time Since the waiter took my order. Grimy little luncheonette, The snow falling outside. Seems like it has grown darker Since I last heard the kitchen door Behind my back Since I last noticed Anyone pass on the street. A glass of ice-water Keeps me company At this table I chose myself Upon entering. And a longing, Incredible longing
To eavesdrop On the conversation Of cooks
Advice from the Experts
I lay down in the empty street and parked My feet against the gutter's curb while from The building above a bunch of gawkers perched Along its ledges urged me don't, don't jump