|
| |
My Brooklyn
There may have been neighborhoods
with green lawns, playgrounds, and ballfields
a short walk from houses with enough
bedrooms for everyone.
Houses that stood apart from one another,
so owners could park cars in garages
set towards the back and then walk on paved
walkway to back doors leading to kitchens
with modern appliances,
but I live with five others in a three-bedroom
six-room railroad room apartment fourth floor
walk-up in a six-story row tenement house
on a block with twelve other buildings,
exactly the same.
Built-in the late eighteen or early
nineteen hundreds.
Buildings riddled with cracked walls,
leaking ceilings, stuck windows,
overflowing toilets, mice, and roaches
that were there to stay, with garbage cans
'most missing covers' in alleyways
that rats owned after dark, leading, to.
Courtyards with ‘No Loitering’ signs posted,
where we played hopscotch, hit the stick,
marbles, red light green light one two three.
Where Valerie’s mom jumped into from
the roof to.
That summer’s day my mother said that
‘we were moving’.
Copyright ©
Mike Lef
|
|