Dancing at Lake Montebello. Lynne Viti

in with her bookbag, asking

      What’s for supper? The one who called the mother

      when the girl had a fever, or when the insurance man

      or paper boy came to the door to collect the payment.

      Call her by her name, Miss Brown

      who came north from Virginia before the War,

      who taught the girl how to iron,

      how to make a piecrust,

      who asked the smallest of favors,

      bring that vacuum cord down here,

      run upstairs and get me that dustcloth, who said

      Thank you, baby, I’ll dance at your wedding.

      A photo of Miss Burnell Brown hangs on the wall.

      She lounges, draping herself on the double bed, smiling.

      Moments before the shutter blinked

      she had a coughing fit.

      She looks resigned, her bible and the radio nearby.

      She lived another six years,

      then the diabetes, the bad heart,

      the emphysema carried her off.

      Matinee at the Shore

      At the candy store near the whitewashed movie house

      we spent our nickels on cream caramels and fireballs,

      stuffed the small bags of sticky sweets into our pockets.

      We pulled our t-shirts down to hide the evidence.

      Don’t go on the Ferris wheel or the Tilt-a-Whirl,

      sit downstairs at that movie house, the mothers warned,

      as my older friend and I set out for Division Street.

      DewAnn was a tough girl from Dundalk, sassy, full of questions.

      I was three years younger, only half-listened to the mothers’ rules:

      Separate sections, balcony, different customs down here —

      Ensconced in her booth, the ticket lady asked our ages.

      DewAnn hesitated. She was tall, looked twelve —

      that meant an adult ticket, fifty cents.

      All but our last quarter each was gone.

      We were lucky that day — the woman didn’t fuss.

      She tore two gray tickets off the roll, never smiled.

      I followed DewAnn’s long legs up the wooden staircase,

      dragged my hand on rough painted wallboards as we went.

      The candy bag bulged in my pocket.

      Laughter met us as at the landing.

      Empty seats surrounded us.

      I didn’t like to sit far from others

      in a dark theater, even for comedies.

      DewAnn said, We can’t mix.

      We’d already broken one law, no candy inside the movies.

      I felt we might as well break another — but I didn’t say a word.

      After the newsreel, the screen turned to color.

      Every soul in the balcony cheered.

      But I slid down low in my seat,

      stuffed another caramel into my mouth.

      Clifton Park

      I demanded that my mother

      take me back to the park

      with the three swimming pools.

      Summer was hotter then.

      At night fans cooled us down.

      In the days we moved slowly,

      drank iced tea or Kool-Aid.

      I asked her to take me to the city park

      with the three pools, concrete-bottomed, concrete-sided.

      The baby pool, the pool for grown-ups

      the middle one just right for me.

      I waded cautiously into the shallow end,

      watched boys dive into my pool,

      swim like fish through cold water.

      Their skin was dark,

      their hair in dark little whorls in perfect patterns.

      I pestered my mother to take me back.

      She shook her head. Why, I asked. Why not?

      All summer I contemplated the three pools, the boys

      calling out challenges to one another,

      shoving, laughing, scrambling

      onto the pool’s concrete edges.

      Why, I kept asking — Why

      don’t we go back there?

      Polio, she answered.

      And too many city people.

      I understood polio

      but the rest confused me.

      What could be better than

      to be near those boys, their skin glistening,

      their shouts, name-calling, bragging

      in our pool, in our city?

      Labor Day

      It was a day out, a day off.

      They stocked the boat with bait and tackle,

      Luckies and Camels, sandwiches and beer,

      headed for where the bay meets the ocean.

      There were plenty of stripers in those days,

      bonitas, perch when your luck ran out,

      more blues than you could catch and clean,

      supper and then some, all glistening prizes.

      To say something went wrong that day

      is to turn away from the sun on their faces,

      the sun on gray water,

      beer cans they drained, tossed overboard.

      To say something went wrong

      is to ignore the yells when one of them

      startled out of half-sleep.

      The boat stopped drifting, dashed against the bridge.

      I can’t say if there was silence or moans

      as they made way to shore,

      to City Hospital’s green corridors,

      to black telephones to call home.

      My father dragged that leg around for years—

      that natural prosthesis, ankle fused to foot.

      He was early to bed then.

      His arsenal of pills filled the bathroom shelf.

      One day he taught me to hit a softball

      directed my stance, placed my hands on the bat,

      Warned me never to daydream at the plate.

      The Good Father

      The good father fell asleep on Saturdays

      stretched out long on the couch.

      Or he