Olu Dara :: Harlem Country Girl
Brooklyn is 103 degrees. You can feel the pavement’s heat through the thin soles of your shoes, and when you cross the street the asphalt displaces in small ways under your feet. Your body is mostly water, but today asphalt is more fluid than you.
The thought would blow your mind, but you are thinking about your arms. You’d meant to fill just the one canvas bag at the grocery, but the produce looked so much better than you see in your neighborhood. The plastic bags are heavy enough so your arm muscles burn a bit. The sun has your skin burning a bit, too. Heat inside, heat outside—the effect is kind of nice.
A drop of sweat slides down your side. You know there’s nothing you can do about it, and that’s kind of nice, too. Heat and resignation are good for the soul.
You come up on the small park at Fulton and Greene. Even before you see it, you hear the festival there—samples and drums, freestyling and laughter. The park is full of afros and hair wraps, West African fabrics and Negritude t-shirts. Older gentlemen wear tweedy hats. Little ones with snow cones run wild in beaded braids. You wish you didn’t have grocery bags on you. But you do, and you’re too broke to let good groceries rot in the sun.
Still, you cut through the park to bask in the party—the heat, the noise, the love. Because it’s Brooklyn in the summertime, the party has no middle. It’s all the middle. The kids run circles around you. The grandfathers nod. You pass the bandstand and you catch someone’s eyes.
And damn but they don’t catch you back.
You don’t stop. You’re not going to stop. But for a second, the light turns to honey. You are both moving slow. Your heads keep turning to hold the gaze. There is nothing else, just cool honey and that gaze.
You keep on moving. You could swear there’s a trumpet. Cool trumpet and honey, slow. And already you’ve gone past.
The honey thins back to summer light. The trumpet fades. The heat returns, and more this time. Another bead of sweat lets go. But you know there’s nothing you can do.
Harlem Country Girl
Olu Dara (homepage)
joshua said on thursday, march 20th, 2008
Rob said on thursday, march 20th, 2008
Hey Josh, I can recommend a good Molasses song for that!
tina said on friday, march 21st, 2008
Rob-
We should bake some cookies.
emily said on friday, march 21st, 2008
that is gorgeous.
Katy said on wednesday, march 26th, 2008
Sexiest post thus far. And thanks—the thought of bathing in honey makes this snow more tolerable.
Happy Vernal Equinox y’all!
This is great Tina. I can smell and taste the summer streets.
Sadly, we have eight inches of snow coming our way.