The
House Where I Grew Up
The house where I grew up has
changed
It's smaller
The rough stucco covered by smooth metal boards
My friend's yard is smaller too
the house next door neater
and the elm tree gone
It's now the kind of street where
when you park there
they look out between lace curtains
wondering if they should call the police
about the car idling in front of their house.
I'm a stranger on the street
where a pig-tailed five-year-old walked to school
with a handkerchief pinned to her red sweater
where a 16-year-old boyfriend arrived embarrassingly on his bicycle
where lace and perfume hid the sticky evidence of love
I want to call to the faces behind
the curtains
that I belong here,
wasn't trespassing as I walked
in their overgrown alley,
poked through the wood fence boards
looking for my mother's sweet peas.
The gypsy woman's house on the
corner
looks harmless now
but I can taste the fear
that still makes me speed my pace as I walk by
past the house where the girl lived whom we shunned
after her red-spotted dress betrayed our womanhood
A frantic dream,
a comic book
where I didn't belong,
couldn't stay long,
as my walk
turned into a run
my memory on fire
for the last block
realizing
I haven't gone anywhere.
No Time
I'm trying to crowd
as much as possible
Into the second half of my life.
Piling up sweet sounds,
strong words,
pungent smells,
layer upon layer of sensation.
I have no time.
You tell me there's all
the time
in the universe...
millennium left after I die
But I need to write
one last poem
to describe the short yellow hairs
on your belly
and the damp red leaves
that cover the dying vines
in my back garden.
