steaminess

Its fusion of Latin American tradition and streetwise steaminess — she says she wanted to take magical realism and “make it hip-hop” — can be traced to Acevedo’s background as a Dominican American poet raised in Harlem.

If it is not now summer, it is close to it, but the sogginess, the steaminess, the sweaty stickiness seemed nowhere to be found.

That is especially so if we insist on steaminess as an essential summertime ingredient.

The steaminess of a summer day exploded into storminess Tuesday evening, offering the spectacle of thunder, lightning and wind-whipped rain, along with the discomforts of power outages at tens of thousands of homes and businesses.

Its full steaminess was not yet upon us.