-Ragonesi’s house-

Off Linden, the craggy dead-end

Found Ragonesi’s house.

Rags lived with his mother.

We never asked him about his father,

The circumstance remembered as being

Out of life’s character,

In that families stayed together ‘till death did they part.

So maybe he died.
We assumed his father had died.

Maybe this house stands as testament

To something not finished; not realized;—

The house whose living architecture is incomplete.

Maybe. I don’t know.

Ragonesi’s house was half a house.

It was built that way.

Take a small, old two-decker.

Saw the thing down the middle,
Save the side with the toilet,
Put the wall back up

And sit it down on a short spit of gravel

Peppered with snapping weeds.

This is Ragonesi’s house.

Half a house on half a street.

Half a family.

“Chico” Johnson had a new 1959

Ford Custom 300, six-cylinder

Four-door sedan, light blue, three-

Speed stick-shift on the column

And when we piled into it, six or seven guys

Were screaming “Shotgun!”

Except for Rags.

Albert Ragonesi liked sitting

In the back seat.

Back there, it’s every man for himself.

We'd drive to Sambo’s Diner on Pleasant

Where the fast cars congregated and revved-up menacingly,

Daring to be challenged.

The Custom 300 was understandably ignored,

Tucked innocently behind the metallic screams
Of four-barrel carbs,

Fuel injectors, and Ram-inductors.

It was all about getting a lot of gasoline fast to the pistons.

But Albert's mother shuffled slowly across the linoleum

Of half a kitchen in half a house on half a street,

Preparing a platter of Oreo cookies
Late at night when the Diners closed because she knew
We’d be on our way to Ragonesi's house.

                                                  Quequechan