Tamale lady knocks at the door,
waves, smiles. On the drive,
a paper bag steams in a two-wheeled cart,
the kind old people push to bus stops.
In winter, the sweet ones, with raisins,
hot and precious in foil,
do more than the hearth for the inside of a man.
In summer she makes them with peaches
from old man Rodriquez’s tree,
sunshine dripped with honey.
When her cart’s empty
before she goes home to work,
she reads a little book
at a bus stop on the Avenida.
Grass burns blond.
Tree leaves droop.
Old men with gardens
douse azaleas with spouted cans.
Corn in the garden
died a while back,
stands skeletal
yellow, hard cracked.
People rush home
through brown haze to huddle in.
Evening, a hush falls along sidestreets.
Tire swings sway empty.
underneath here, there must be a wheat penny,
a reassurance from the roosevelt administration
things will be all right and people, here and to come,
will have had children with truck-spring backs,
joints strong as steel,
and minds like wells filled with sweet, cool water
so far, rows of shark-tooth carpet strips
with foot molding jaws bite before they come up,
and again later in ratcheted, skeleton piles
thrown onto the refuse out back—
tarantulas in the sun like bad memories
decades of skin dust, carpet glue, dog hair,
fingernails, a light bulb, a capsule–
in a lipless hole, on a dusty bed of insulation
a hospital bracelet: “Ronnell James Harlan, 4/10/98,
newborn, mother, Katrisha Lorene”
strings of weave trail across the floor
to rolls at one end of the room—
old times, old faces lifted,
new times to form the room into a thing
useful and needful of people who make it
before the boss comes, I look into dog-stain corners,
under the roof incline, behind the knotty pine,
into the attic at either side, where a wheat penny
might have rolled after slipping from a pocket,
dropping from a dresser, falling from a child’s hand
new pad, new carpet, new ideas;
a room that smells of the modern age
and under this carpet or the next,
a wartime, red-painted zinc lincoln,
say 1943, when times were tough
and people bought things with coupons
Buzzing heat murdered
children’s squeals and shouts at noon.
Swings hang plumb to center,
chains and seats too hot to touch—
brittle grass, frying-pan asphalt.
At dusk, the kids peer out front doors,
turtle back where they came from.
Down the street, machine rattle and hum,
not a soul stirs, dogs pant under cottonwoods,
even cats cower under the shrubs.
Hammocks flutter in a hallway of front porches.
A funny little man with a bent back and one foot—
the other he lost in the “big freeze of ’83”
while drinking the last of his Sterno
and breaking rock with a can of tuna—
smells of wood smoke and burning tires.
He runs calluses through his John the Baptist wave,
and says the denim in his jeans
is greased with the handshakes he’s had
since he picked those pants up
at the Salvation Army.
He mutters as he listens
to the semis snap steel plates above,
in his hand, he holds cards with tattered edges,
and crayon pictures, memories, he says,
of Thanksgiving, Christmas, Father’s Day.
starlings rise
like smoke in a cold city
cat claws the window
branches, skeletal stiff,
grow lithe, buds sprout overnight
wind, storm, lightning, hail
two chinese bakers
sit in bright, spring sun, eyes closed,
dream of sparkling streams
the fifty-ninth minute slides into the hour
somewhere between arch of spinal column
and curve of hip and stumbles up
nervous, hands crossed behind its back
eyes turned down to the floor a little sleepy,
embarrassed, cheeks flushed
Picnic baskets spilled, sticky pop gone flat,
salty, soggy chips, peanutbuttermesses,
sunburn noses, jammed thumbs,
toes skinned on the bottom of the pool.
Chairs and towels, whining boys,
impatient sisters lost in parking lot reflections,
sun like murder.
At the edge of the pool
mothers gaze on water nymphs
in flashing waves.
he jerked about the hospital bed
like a moth in the bottom of a porch lamp
family had become strangers
pictures on the wall, more strangers
a retirement party, a wedding, a grandchild’s baptism
a paper clipping with his grandchild’s name
and one more picture, another stranger,
somewhat familiar—a boy, floppy ears, narrow face,
bow tie in a one-room schoolhouse
the man in the bed, his eyes
free from worry, looked like those of the kid
for the first time in seventy years
wind busts down concrete and brick canyons,
rain chases bums into doorways and under steps;
over hunched shoulders and upturned collars,
umbrellas open and close like fists