Arousal

Hot when it’s one of your kin

Willowy and leaf-like,

Laid delicately down by uniformed men.

You smile as if you’re nearly there

And touch the cold steel frame in boiling air.

The room is happily more cool most times

And television fills it with a glow:

A gaudy screen withdrawn

Reveals fresh colours –

The actors, mothers clutching forlorn

Their bloated babies dying in the shacks.

For forty seconds half the country’s warm.

The nation glides from cold to glacier blue,

Dead eyes reflecting variegation,

Cheeks and teeth –

Awaiting something new

Like sirens at the onset of the thaw.