Suburbari Westside Concerto
errol miller
The cafes serve “good” coffee
if you're willing to buy a seat, our hosts
serving good beer, too, even this very morning
my Valentine and I bore throu.,gh the summer heat
transported up from New Orleans, we shook our heads
in amazement at our nameless friends and relatives
who wandered off to Fringeland: the quarrels
were about nothing, really, too tired to sleep
we arose early and wandered past the Pizza Place,
past the Flower Shop and Barbara's Bookstore.
Together we are one, but the buildings change,
the airways filled with all tyle c(.)inings,
all the goings, and short fliglit.-, to Peoria.
Sometimes life throws you a curve throu
with a kiss before suppertime ands stabs you
before the sun rises again. Downtown,
they are studying the spilled blood on Westside
streets, matching it with the recent dead.
And we so badly want to write a story
with real ink, to see our children smile
in satisfaction. But they are only going
to the pool for a Sunday swim.
Soon it will be autumn with falling leaves.
Pity the poor of heart who do not understand loss,
who toss and turn relentlessly in grey flannel
odysseys labeled as happenstance.
Next door, the neighbor mows his lawn.
This reminds me of my terror after graduation.
Can I just leave behind this postcard spot
so neatly packed and parceled into memory?
Of course, we only dropped in for seven days.
Sasha reads a Gothic novel about Basque lovers
who did not last, their dimlit stories
vanishing into earth and sea even
before the Titanic sank. And the winds
blow harder, and the windy night is darker,
and the slave-trade of the soul begins
to fester in fleshy enclaves of the mind:
Vassar girls know how to handle any situation,
but Sasha and I puzzle over discourse, why
man's inhumanity to man often starts at home.
She was educated in Holy Places, not
the Southwest, but downtown, at St. Mary's.
Her immaculate heart is pure as gold
and mine is distorted with Southern slang.
So we've broken new ground, sown it
with fresh words, not from each other
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