AMERICANA


Corduroy cuffs
Swagger by
Whistling,
Cling,
To bow-legged
Lizard booted
Korean cowboy
In Connecticut.
Sorry, son,
No rodeo today!
The Danbury Fair's
A shopping mall.

By Robert Friedman
SUMMER IS A CHILD


Summer is a child
a child is no money
summer is a child
a child moving
Walking is a move
a child moving
a child is no money
Money is a dead plant
a child is water
Water runs but banks,
Money banks but goes-
a child grows, flows
a child is a laugh
Summer is a laughing child
grinning at the dying money
A child is yellow
green money, mildew smells grey
smothers time
Summer is a minute
A child is summer
minutes are fatter than money
Money is thin
skinny money is old children
fat minutes are young and yellow
grass is green and smells nicer than money
Summer is barefoot in a bunch of grass
A child is a barefoot summer
A child is a bunch of summer
Summer is a child

By Donna Kerness Walence
A POUND OF FLESH

Two months out of work with five hungry kids and a shattered knee, hope was hard. The ad read "Caregivers needed-will train. Excellent health a must". So I lied about my knee and got the job.

They stationed me in that part of town where railroad tracks and empty barnish factories created Wyeth landscapes. Two aids with pinched faces and raccoon eyes met me at the door. "She's in here" said one and with nicotined fingers, lightened the bowels of the house with a naked bulb to show the floor.

My patient lay on a bold, bracketed bed. Five hundred paralyzed pounds of flesh. Rubber sheets billowed beneath herlike whitewater waves and gangren slapped our faces like the stench of dead things in a shallow tide, while she slipped in the slick filth, a whale in an oil slick, from side to side.

The other two scuttled in crablike retreat toward the door, 'til I snared them with a stare and a gunshot stamp upon the floor, demanding allegiance.It took all three to lift one leg as big as me, to clean the filth from beneath her folds of more and more.

I tried not to look into her seacow eyes or hear her too-small-for-her-body voice because she would cease to be a job and become a person for whom I'd feel. My crumpled knee snapped and creaked, making sounds of rotten planking while I sweated to hold her up. I did think the time would never come for me to leave.

That week my babies laughed and slapped their full bellies and licked their sticky fingers clean, but I wouldn't eat. No matter how hard I scrubbed, no scented oils or sweet soap could wash away the smell of her pain.


By Adele C. Geraghty
CARROLL GARDEN MEMOIRE

I turned my head around and saw my body
across the street sharing a tree with a dog-
everything has been floating around
including the children-
the market floor is like a filthy sponge
bouncing me from aisle to aisle-
I can't even find a yellow grape-
a group of hairy old vampires salivate by
the meat counter-
and I slither through the checkout
with double bagged groceries
carrying it all like feathers and cream-
the old men playing bocci ball
in the park scream-
and the children play hop scotch
over the dog poop-
we pedal tricycles sometimes, but it can
get sloppy-
I can barely suppress this ecstacy
of sneakers tap dancing in my groin
while forsythias take the place of sunshine
I can almost smell a field of grass,
an ocean, a mango, a melon
and an orange moon melting
in the lining of my skin-

Either I've become a fruit,
or it's really, really Spring......

By Donna Kerness Walence
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