Perhaps I needed a separate cart
for my hair, or anything else crouched
on my back. My heart: a dumpy paper
coaster. I was making history
useless, just like the textbooks we had
with our parents’ names shaved
into back covers. I could not un-light
the weekly paper on fire, but
could forget the way an Oldsmobile
burned on four cinderblocks
in the Chicago of my childhood,
where every car was an Oldsmobile
on blocks, and sometimes blocks
and blocks of houses went up, so all
the mothers brought their grape soda
and gin to the curb. Houses so
close together I could slap the neighbor
girl’s face through the shag peak
of a corridor elm. Some roofs
were patched with corrugated plastic,
the occasional refrigerator box.
So when I boil everything, including
the boy’s sneakers, I am using intrinsic
knowledge. The incorrect guide
book where we would scratch out
the year 1965, send strangers down
roads that burned years ago,
to a bakery now covered by gravel.
Photo by Tim
