"Rain Dance" by Leo Evans

All day the five of us'd been at the dirt
like it was bologna snitched from the fridge.
Nobody swattin' our seats, sayin' we shouldn't,
we ate, poked our knees into the sky.
Worked gray most way up arms and legs
like steelmen. Teisha'n me
scrabbled under her family's copper Nova
for lost washers to bury then discover
like Indiana Jones. Some famous explorer like that.

Midafternoon we could see rain.
The sky sheddin' its skin
a strip between sun and us, draped
against factory chimneys blocks away,
peelin' off to flip into the gutter,
then shoot down storm drains.

Can't 'member when it arrived.
Next we were inhalin' the sizzle of water
on steel, a smell we knew
best mixed with sweat, coke and oil - daddies.
We flung arms up in the drencher, bust out
laughin' hard as those pigeons over the tracks. All of us
stripped down shirtless. Girls too; we were
only eight. Went sloppin' through gutters
hand to hand, skin to skin.
Us and sunlight comin' out in a thousand colors.

BIO: Alyssa Hayek lives in Virginia with her family. Her poems have been published in many publications, of which the most recent are can we have our ball back? and Lotus Blooms Journal. She is a 2004 Pushcart Prize Nominee. Email: lyssarae@cox.net