SUMMER HEAT by Doug Fritock

SUMMER HEAT

— after ‘When I Was Conceived’ by Michael Ryan

It was 1976, and July. America
was celebrating its birthday.
Bicentennial flags were draped
from porches, and our national bird
had been liberated from the quarter,
set free by the Treasury,
while a Continental drummer
wearing a tricorn hat had taken
its place, although whether
he was playing a drumroll or hitting
a rimshot still remained to be seen,
at least as far as I was concerned.
My father was working in a lab
in Glenolden, my mother taking
the train to her job in the city.
They used to argue about breakfast.
Whether my mother should rise
early and have it ready on the table—
eggs and bacon, coffee and juice—
like the wives of my father’s
colleagues, or whether my father
could toast his own damn slice
of bread. On Sundays, they watched
Alice on their new Sony Trinitron,
my mother telling my father
to Kiss my grits and my father
responding Stow it, a subtle smirk
curling beneath his moustache.
In three years’ time, they’d be
divorced. But still, buried deep
in this shoebox in my father’s garage,
there’s a polaroid of my mother
reclining on a chaise lounge
in the backyard, her blouse un-
buttoned, her hair mussed, her shorts
shorter than any I’ve ever seen
gracing her thighs. I guess it was
a real scorcher in the suburbs
of Philadelphia that summer.
Steamy. Sultry. Oppressive.
And the house didn’t have A/C.

*

Doug Fritock is a writer, husband, and father of 4 living in Redondo Beach, California. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Rattle, Prime Number Magazine, and Whale Road Review among others. He is an active member of Maya C. Popa’s Conscious Writers Collective.