Dancing at Lake Montebello. Lynne Viti

Times, “At the Foghorn”

      South Florida Poetry Journal, “Parrot Jungle,” “Eve’s Diary,” “Sugar Pumpkins,” “God’s Thief”

      Stillwater Review, “Lament”

      Subterranean Blue Poetry, “Nickel Dreams”

      Temenos, “More Dangerous for All of Us”

      Topology, “Clifton Park”

      Westerly, “Greenwich Mean Time”

      Work to a Calm, “How You Were Before”

      I. Girls

      Biography

      White girl, born in the city, grew up near the county line.

      Catholic school, navy jumper, nuns in round white collars.

      Negroes, only saw them when we went downtown,

      on the streetcar — after North Avenue when you looked around

      there were hardly any white faces. When the school day was done

      the bus filled up with teenagers heading deeper into the city,

      their school books stacked under their arms.

      The boys gave up their seats to the girls.

      I breathed the air of segregation, taking it in,

      hardly knowing how it worked in this border state city

      of unstated rules, takeout only, segregated pools,

      separate schools, public or private, secular or parochial —

      Separate movie theaters, separate stores. I graduated from saying

      colored people to Negroes, still, everything stayed separate.

      Brown-skinned bus drivers, trash men, busboys, day cleaning ladies.

      White teachers, doctors, priests, Girl Scout leaders, hairdressers.

      My black-and-white TV world:

      Nat King Cole, Eartha Kitt, small figures

      with big, rich voices coming from our Sylvania.

      They looked so small.

      That was the air we took into our lymphatic vessels,

      our blood, our reproductive organs, it was our field vision.

      It would be years before we’d awake (or refuse to),

      to see we had not sensed a system behind the screen.

      Parrot Jungle

      A lizard darted up the screen.

      I left my doll, half-naked, outside on the lawn.

      The plastic wading pool wore inflatable yellow rings.

      I wouldn’t wear the bathing suit top, only the ruched shorts.

      There were no children to play with.

      My parents smoked and drank beer in the shade.

      One night they went to the races —

      I don’t know who stayed with me.

      We drove to a place where giant parrots in bold feathered coats

      were brought to us so we’d hold them on our arms.

      My mother was game —

      I watched the birds perch on her pale forearms.

      I stood behind my father, clung to his Miami jacket.

      Pink flamingos walked around a lake.

      It looked like a picture book, but larger, in motion.

      My mother laughed. Don’t worry, they’re tame.

      At night I lay in bed and heard the grown-ups talking,

      low voices of the men punctuated by my mother’s laughter.

      She was with her girlhood friend, Lucille.

      Tobacco smoke drifted in from where they sat outside.

      The night was full of the sound of ice rattling in cocktail glasses.

      My brown-skinned baby doll lay abandoned by the palm tree.

      I dreamed of lizards racing across the cracked pavement

      to the underside of the bungalow, cool and dark as a starless sky.

      Inheritance

      A fair, freckled child who knew only one person with

      dark skin, hair that crinkled at the temples

      with eyes the color of the rich garden earth —

      might be forgiven for thinking that this woman,

      who each day walked from the streetcar stop on the corner

      to the child’s home, half a house

      spitting distance from the city-county line — should marry.

      Marry what was grown-ups did, her parents, aunts, uncles —

      All married. Only the priest and nuns were not.

      Like the cardinals in the yard, the red male, dun-colored female,

      everyone should have a partner, be one of a pair.

      That child might be forgiven for foolishly suggesting

      the woman who came to cook and clean should wed the man

      who pushed a broom at the brick building

      by the alleyway, an office building owned by a white man

      the child never saw, only heard his name spoken,

      Mister something-or-other, a forgettable name.

      But Mister Fitcher, the handyman, was handsome.

      He wore tan trousers and a white shirt.

      The child’s father called him Fitcher, never Mister.

      When the child revealed her matchmaking plan

      for Miss Burnell to marry Mister Fitcher,

      her father laughed —

      Fitcher was already married, had kids.

      The child’s imagination hadn’t stretched that far,

      she couldn’t envision Mister Fitcher with children, a wife.

      She thought he slept in the office building.

      She saw him every day but Sunday

      working in the alley near the back door,

      always in motion, carrying boxes,

      hosing down the boss’s car,

      hauling junk away in an old Chevy pickup.

      Privilege let her grow tall,

      gave her a voice people listened to.

      Miss Burnell worked hard, liked her drink on a Saturday night,

      had a couple girlfriends, whether drinking pals or lovers

      was never clear. She worked till she was sixty-five,

      The crinkly black hair turned salt-and-pepper.

      The emphysema came in her later years, after the riots,

      after all the houses on Biddle Street were razed.

      The girl grew up, married, had a baby, sent photos to her old —

      What should she call her? Who was she, besides Burnell?

      Babysitter, housekeeper, nanny, minder,

      the one always there after the school day ended,

      when