Sun's Stroke

by Lisa M. Bradley

High noon in South Texas and I can't trust what I see

Pools of black water float on the road, beckoning me

Heat waves rise and shimmer from sand, sidewalk, and metal

Chrome reflections warp reality, searing my eyelids like venom

Half blinded with light and sweat I trudge over sunbaked caliche

Deafened by cicadas and summer's sleepy, silent malignity

Without breeze, without shade I feel the char spreading over my skin

And the bake on my scalp cooks my thoughts till lazy and thin

If a snake follows in my sandal tracks and licks up the bland dust

Who am I to try and understand or summon energy for a fuss

This southern heat is unrelenting, suffocating and heavy

It wears you down to your knees, a tarp pinning and fuzzy

And if snake becomes a man holding out blood oranges

Dripping and obscene like rotting vermilion sponges

Why resist that hooded-eye temptation to lie beneath

His slick dryness, now rid of bristly, barbed skin-sheath

And if his mouth pricks, armed with jagged cactus teeth

Who am I to complain as long as I can hide underneath

His sunblocking bulk and pry inside the chinks of his shingle skin

To find the tangled oasis that may be lurking within

And if he squirms, retaliates, with remonstrative tarantula fangs

If I find the wet paradise of blood, what matter the poison pangs

If I may bathe in that reptilian pool

That weakly pulsing jet of release and of cool?

This poem first appeared in Dreams and Nightmares 50 in March of 1998

About the Author:

Lisa M. Bradley is a Texan, despite having lived in Iowa for almost ten years now, and her southern origins are evident in much of her writing, including this poem. She has most recently sold fiction to Brutarian, The Three-Lobed Burning Eye, and Night to Dawn. When she can scrape her napping cat off the style manuals, Lisa edits articles for a political science journal.

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