On Jupiter Place. Nicholas Christopher

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СКАЧАТЬ she received

      a different sort of tattoo

      the jagged numerals on her wrist

      that she refused to remove

      and two doors down from her

      behind a wall of evergreens

      Mr. Boehringer the baker

      a Bund member during the war

      who spoke only German at home

      and told anyone willing to listen

      including his granddaughter

      Heidi with her blond pigtails

      that Franklin Roosevelt was a Jew

      in league with Stalin —

      Heidi who ate uncooked

      hot dogs without buns

      they tasted like bologna she said

      which was what the Lazzeri twins

      Vincent and Little Steve

      piled on Silvercup bread

      with no mustard or mayo

      their father Big Steve a mobster

      who every Christmas

      gave his wife a fur coat

      and on their tenth anniversary

      a two-tone Coupe de Ville

      that he washed and waxed

      on Sundays in their driveway

      next door to Mr. Porti’s family

      struggling behind drawn drapes

      his daughter Genevieve

      in hand-me-down dresses

      and scuffed shoes was my friend

      her mother the widow

      had suffered a nervous breakdown

      so that Genevieve too

      was being raised by her grandmother

      herself a widow born in Sicily

      who carried a cane to ward off dogs

      and across the street from them

      Mr. Fallon the used car salesman

      who had no license

      and was driven to work

      by his wife a secret drinker

      that everyone knew about

      both of them tormented

      by their roughneck son

      who one day put me

      in a headlock until I turned blue

      and I knocked his tooth out

      and bloodied his nose

      and his mother screamed that I was a savage

      that we were all savages

      though in fact I rarely got into trouble

      and mostly kept to myself

      while my father all that time

      lived alone in the small apartment

      that had been our home

      before my mother was hospitalized

      and held down two jobs

      one to support us

      the other to pay her medical bills

      until finally she was released

      from the hospital

      and that first afternoon was resting

      in my grandmother’s room

      when I was brought in to her

      I hadn’t seen her in a long time

      she was pale and very thin

      her hair was cut short

      and I told her to get out

      of my grandmother’s bed

      out of her room

      I didn’t know who she was anymore

      maybe I never did or could —

      not the girl that danced

      until dawn on her wedding night

      or the middle-aged woman

      with ailments real and imaginary

      who withered beneath

      the weight of her fears —

      for when she died many years later

      having loved me (I know) as best she could

      she was still a stranger

       THE GRAVEYARD SHIFT

      I work the graveyard shift in a city of believers

      hunched over a steel desk in a cone of light

      facing a window with drawn blinds

      beyond which the innocents are being slaughtered

      in an enormous courtyard against all four walls

      firing squads rotating around the clock

      while masked men in the watchtowers

      keep count in red ink on red pads

      simultaneously recording and concealing

      the numbers of dead

      and nodding with each round of gunfire

      mumbling praise to their leader

      and his god whose righteousness and mercy

      he mirrors while I keep to СКАЧАТЬ