in with her bookbag, asking
What’s for supper? The one who called the mother
when the girl had a fever, or when the insurance man
or paper boy came to the door to collect the payment.
Call her by her name, Miss Brown
who came north from Virginia before the War,
who taught the girl how to iron,
how to make a piecrust,
who asked the smallest of favors,
bring that vacuum cord down here,
run upstairs and get me that dustcloth, who said
Thank you, baby, I’ll dance at your wedding.
A photo of Miss Burnell Brown hangs on the wall.
She lounges, draping herself on the double bed, smiling.
Moments before the shutter blinked
she had a coughing fit.
She looks resigned, her bible and the radio nearby.
She lived another six years,
then the diabetes, the bad heart,
the emphysema carried her off.
Matinee at the Shore
At the candy store near the whitewashed movie house
we spent our nickels on cream caramels and fireballs,
stuffed the small bags of sticky sweets into our pockets.
We pulled our t-shirts down to hide the evidence.
Don’t go on the Ferris wheel or the Tilt-a-Whirl,
sit downstairs at that movie house, the mothers warned,
as my older friend and I set out for Division Street.
DewAnn was a tough girl from Dundalk, sassy, full of questions.
I was three years younger, only half-listened to the mothers’ rules:
Separate sections, balcony, different customs down here —
Ensconced in her booth, the ticket lady asked our ages.
DewAnn hesitated. She was tall, looked twelve —
that meant an adult ticket, fifty cents.
All but our last quarter each was gone.
We were lucky that day — the woman didn’t fuss.
She tore two gray tickets off the roll, never smiled.
I followed DewAnn’s long legs up the wooden staircase,
dragged my hand on rough painted wallboards as we went.
The candy bag bulged in my pocket.
Laughter met us as at the landing.
Empty seats surrounded us.
I didn’t like to sit far from others
in a dark theater, even for comedies.
DewAnn said, We can’t mix.
We’d already broken one law, no candy inside the movies.
I felt we might as well break another — but I didn’t say a word.
After the newsreel, the screen turned to color.
Every soul in the balcony cheered.
But I slid down low in my seat,
stuffed another caramel into my mouth.
Clifton Park
I demanded that my mother
take me back to the park
with the three swimming pools.
Summer was hotter then.
At night fans cooled us down.
In the days we moved slowly,
drank iced tea or Kool-Aid.
I asked her to take me to the city park
with the three pools, concrete-bottomed, concrete-sided.
The baby pool, the pool for grown-ups
the middle one just right for me.
I waded cautiously into the shallow end,
watched boys dive into my pool,
swim like fish through cold water.
Their skin was dark,
their hair in dark little whorls in perfect patterns.
I pestered my mother to take me back.
She shook her head. Why, I asked. Why not?
All summer I contemplated the three pools, the boys
calling out challenges to one another,
shoving, laughing, scrambling
onto the pool’s concrete edges.
Why, I kept asking — Why
don’t we go back there?
Polio, she answered.
And too many city people.
I understood polio
but the rest confused me.
What could be better than
to be near those boys, their skin glistening,
their shouts, name-calling, bragging
in our pool, in our city?
Labor Day
It was a day out, a day off.
They stocked the boat with bait and tackle,
Luckies and Camels, sandwiches and beer,
headed for where the bay meets the ocean.
There were plenty of stripers in those days,
bonitas, perch when your luck ran out,
more blues than you could catch and clean,
supper and then some, all glistening prizes.
To say something went wrong that day
is to turn away from the sun on their faces,
the sun on gray water,
beer cans they drained, tossed overboard.
To say something went wrong
is to ignore the yells when one of them
startled out of half-sleep.
The boat stopped drifting, dashed against the bridge.
I can’t say if there was silence or moans
as they made way to shore,
to City Hospital’s green corridors,
to black telephones to call home.
My father dragged that leg around for years—
that natural prosthesis, ankle fused to foot.
He was early to bed then.
His arsenal of pills filled the bathroom shelf.
One day he taught me to hit a softball
directed my stance, placed my hands on the bat,
Warned me never to daydream at the plate.
The Good Father
The good father fell asleep on Saturdays
stretched out long on the couch.
Or he