-sister's in front-

“Your sister needs all those things.”

This, my younger brother and I

Were often told by our parents

To temper our justifications

Of acquiring more stuff.

Her room looked like a bright

Amusement park

Filled with things I couldn't understand;—

Bottles

In liquid jade and amber,
Rare patterns in textiles,

Colorful curtains, multiple hairbrushes,

And a circular mirror on its own stand, which
When rotated magnifies the face,

All atop the over-populated dressers.

It looked like a garden.

It smelled like the perfume counter

At Cherry & Web on Main Street.

Our room was “upside down”

And smelled like laundry in waiting.

Earlier, as my sister tapped and spun,

Unafraid and dauntless

In performances for the parlor company,

My brother and I would watch at the arch
Of the hallway from the kitchen. 

Sometimes, between sets
As she changed for a ballet number

I’d do magic tricks at my own insistence 

As interlude to the articulate theater of my sister.

Three little wooden balls

Are placed at the webbing of my open fingers.

I’d present them to the company,

Plucking them out with deliberate
Fingers of the other hand.

Nothing up my sleeves.

When I returned them between my fingers,

“Abracadabra”—

There are only two little wooden balls.
Nothing up my sleeves.

The company smiles stiffly.

Her room was like an orchard.

In her mid-teen years when her girlfriends

Walked into the first-floor tenement

Passing through the kitchen like a meteor shower,

The borders of her room were tightened;

My parents acting as sentries.

My brother was too young
To realize the beauty.

But from the wrong side of the door
I’d position myself as close as allowed.

Stars dropped in my house.

Splash of red polishes water their toes.

Drops of Wind Song dab the skin at their throats.
The sleeves of the 45s are written by name.


Behind the door, above the curious whispers,
The sounds of Fats Domino at the piano
Seem curiously muted.
My sister needed all those things.
In the beginning, so did I.

                                Quequechan