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Kyla Guimaraes
Kyla Guimaraes is a writer and student from New York City. Her writing has been recognized by the Young Poets Network and the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers, and can be found in The Penn Review, Aster Lit, Blue Marble Review, and elsewhere. Kyla is a poetry editor at Eucalyptus Lit. In addition to writing, Kyla likes bad puns and going outside in the rain.
Heat Exhaustion
Afternoon sounds like whalesong
and tastes like grapes—or maybe
sounds like grapes and tastes
like whalesong. It simmers
against the pavement
like head lice. I’ll kill it, I swear,
with shampoo and it’ll stop
itching. I’ll kill the afternoon.
I’ll stamp it out. Heat, dulled
like an ingrown toenail,
stutters across the horizon,
which sways against the ground
as if it's in love. The body is made
low with longing
and humidity. Fainting and napping
are the same thing here. Both
done with the eyes closed.
Afternoon explodes like vomit.
Afternoon erodes like a corpse.
I stand outside in the heat and pluck
strands of hair from my head, holding
them up to the light until I can see
the small white nits congealed to each
strand. Hatching, slowly, into larvae.
Eating away the body onto which
they were born. Afternoon feeds me
with numbers that swim so nicely
I drink them down and invent
my own. Here, in my afternoon,
the temperature never ends,
there is no such thing as SI base units,
and gravity is perpetually negative.
I breathe it into being and then press
my shoulder into its jaw until it dies.
That’s right. I kill afternoon
and my scalp stops itching and the larvae
fall in clumps from my head. I kill
afternoon so good that I start to miss
whalesong and grapes. I miss
being able to love something before
it is buried. I kill the afternoon
and it kills me back. The heat so full
that my body forgets
what living is.
Heat Exhaustion
Afternoon sounds like whalesong
and tastes like grapes—or maybe
sounds like grapes and tastes
like whalesong. It simmers
against the pavement
like head lice. I’ll kill it, I swear,
with shampoo and it’ll stop
itching. I’ll kill the afternoon.
I’ll stamp it out. Heat, dulled
like an ingrown toenail,
stutters across the horizon,
which sways against the ground
as if it's in love. The body is made
low with longing
and humidity. Fainting and napping
are the same thing here. Both
done with the eyes closed.
Afternoon explodes like vomit.
Afternoon erodes like a corpse.
I stand outside in the heat and pluck
strands of hair from my head, holding
them up to the light until I can see
the small white nits congealed to each
strand. Hatching, slowly, into larvae.
Eating away the body onto which
they were born. Afternoon feeds me
with numbers that swim so nicely
I drink them down and invent
my own. Here, in my afternoon,
the temperature never ends,
there is no such thing as SI base units,
and gravity is perpetually negative.
I breathe it into being and then press
my shoulder into its jaw until it dies.
That’s right. I kill afternoon
and my scalp stops itching and the larvae
fall in clumps from my head. I kill
afternoon so good that I start to miss
whalesong and grapes. I miss
being able to love something before
it is buried. I kill the afternoon
and it kills me back. The heat so full
that my body forgets
what living is.
Heat Exhaustion
Afternoon sounds like whalesong
and tastes like grapes—or maybe
sounds like grapes and tastes
like whalesong. It simmers
against the pavement
like head lice. I’ll kill it, I swear,
with shampoo and it’ll stop
itching. I’ll kill the afternoon.
I’ll stamp it out. Heat, dulled
like an ingrown toenail,
stutters across the horizon,
which sways against the ground
as if it's in love. The body is made
low with longing
and humidity. Fainting and napping
are the same thing here. Both
done with the eyes closed.
Afternoon explodes like vomit.
Afternoon erodes like a corpse.
I stand outside in the heat and pluck
strands of hair from my head, holding
them up to the light until I can see
the small white nits congealed to each
strand. Hatching, slowly, into larvae.
Eating away the body onto which
they were born. Afternoon feeds me
with numbers that swim so nicely
I drink them down and invent
my own. Here, in my afternoon,
the temperature never ends,
there is no such thing as SI base units,
and gravity is perpetually negative.
I breathe it into being and then press
my shoulder into its jaw until it dies.
That’s right. I kill afternoon
and my scalp stops itching and the larvae
fall in clumps from my head. I kill
afternoon so good that I start to miss
whalesong and grapes. I miss
being able to love something before
it is buried. I kill the afternoon
and it kills me back. The heat so full
that my body forgets
what living is.
Kyla Guimaraes
Kyla Guimaraes is a writer and student from New York City. Her writing has been recognized by the Young Poets Network and the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers, and can be found in The Penn Review, Aster Lit, Blue Marble Review, and elsewhere. Kyla is a poetry editor at Eucalyptus Lit. In addition to writing, Kyla likes bad puns and going outside in the rain.
Kyla Guimaraes