A poem for the sunshine (a bit spicy!)

HAWAIIAN TROPIC

In this weather,

the coconut ghost of Hawaiian Tropic

wafts back from the Seventies and

I feel the Spanish sands

tickle and grate

and the sting of the hot sun on my brown arms.

Disco beats punch the midnight sky blue-black

and salty kisses

linger like tears on my lips,

the words dissolved

like jellyfish in the sun.

Fernando, Rafael, Miguel –

names that dipped my tongue in honey.

tending their boats in red shorts.

taut and brown and hard as oars,

choc-ices for my eyes.

Granddads now, do they recall

a skinny Scouser redhead

who matched their eagerness

when sex stabbed like a mosquito

in the cicada-scritching night?

No, names and faces were incidental

to the thighs’ molten sun

and coconut-scented flesh

And in the morning, the walk of shame

past laden breakfast tables,

sensing the paused forks, the thoughts:

‘She’s still in her disco gear!

We know what you’ve been doing, dirty cow,’

as envy surged in waves

from folk as old as I am now.

Hawaiian Tropic, it’s all your fault

that today, in the hot sun,

I feel twenty-two again,

cicadas ringing in my ears

and a voice sighs in a coconut shell:

Miguel… Fernando… Rafael…

Lorna Read, 25/5/12