I remember how the dogs never slept at night, how sticky my skin got

after a day in the heat, how I stopped taking showers because I thought

lake water would do just fine, and if your hair got greasy,

well then your hair got greasy, and Nana who’s from Indiana says

that I act like a ten year old boy, when will I stop acting like a ten year old boy,

(never, probably,) and the adults keep doing adult things

and I throw cherry pits at the screened in porch, indignant,

and my mom says things like but she was such a good baby, and Nana was all

I think she’s a lesbian cause she acts like a boy and my uncle lit up and took a drag

I say I want a cigarette or maybe that other thing you smoke so much, Uncle Randy, so mom and

uncle share a look that says hide your fucking weed better, asshole,

and I pretty much smile, so pleased with counter culture and discourse and I decide when I go to

college I want to start a riot and now though now while I blame mom

for scaring me into sobriety and dear grandma for her fucked up Midwest complex

way of thinking, racist sexist fifty’s over medicated housewife grandma,

            I wish she taught me her potato salad recipe, it was the

only thing of hers I liked to eat,  (boil potatoes lightly, chop by hand, something something

something add mustard)

but sticky countertops remodeled in the seventies and smoke in your nostrils

is a must for any summer cooking, sweat-smelling lake-smelling fire-pit smelling,

                                                                        season your food with it.

Don’t put your elbows on the table but I put my elbows anywhere I fucking want, Nana, and I still do

but now I think I realize the necessity of propriety,

you need it to win over people you don’t like, but that’s pretty much it, thanks Nana,

and niceties are thrown out the window when I steal three bucks and buy straw-

berries at the street corner, mash them in my mouth, eat with my whole face,

it has something to do with lake fishing, on hands and knees digging for night crawlers, pinching them

between fingernails, skewering live worms on a hook,

maybe climbing trees I’m not supposed to climb, breaking branches,

the huge birch near the lake that was beautiful and majestic and that yeah I broke,

and it died a couple years later but we had pictures,

and visiting I know fundamentally everything is distorted and older and maybe

my given complexes screw somebody else up, but I always liked sitting on the dock

feet in water, minnows biting a little, looking at one of the few night skies that

still have stars, and I’m alright with it in its transience, and summer wind shakes the

leaves, and Nana calls for help opening a jar of pickles, so there I go.