-first floor at 1017-

The foreground:

Wallpaper, oilcloth and the kitchen sink.

Don’t count the houseflies. Their numbers
Change by the hour.

The background:

Runs through the screen door to the yard
Between two houses.
Outside

The evergreen hedge pushes its stiff
Fingers through the chain-

Link fence.
The grapevine built
By my grandfather before my birth,
Tended by him through the seasons,
Scaffold anchored into a slab
Of cement where wooden
Chairs sat in the leafy shade.
Count
The sparrows,
The remnant of a vegetable garden;
Tomatos, zucchini, pepers, and over there,
Potatoes. 

The street leads to 

The Park then the Church
And beyond it a stand of trees and then
The forbidden granite quarry’s ledge.
The street:

Rolled-out and flattened in front of the house,

The house:
Heavy and indestructible.— Inside,
The women wipe with damp sponges,
A high-pitched swish over the oilcloths
Releasing the pungent scent of petroleum.
The men take off the necessary fedoras

By the fingertips of their hands
At the crease of their crowns at the end
Of their day.

The television:
Jingle's a friendly gasoline delivery system.

                                                       Quequechan