Transaction

The heat makes everything more real:

the sweats are sweatier today;

the stark dark hairs are hairier,

the fats more lipid, more opaque,

and through leftover water drops,

the seeing sun steams oil from us:

humanity is raised at last,

a rich exchange to swap for sun.

The sweat, the hair, the fat, the waste—

and age beats down like summer heat,

the sun made redder by the breaths

of human thousands, damp beneath.

I turn my face against my sleeve

and breathe the smoke my sleeve has caught,

which we were given lives ago

in sharp defiance of the gods.