-in the back with my brother and my friend-

Sunday morning.
The front-seat  finds my father driving,
My mother at the passenger-side window
And my older sister sitting between them.
In the back-seat are my younger brother at the roadside window,
My friend Bobby Petrillo in the middle, and me,
At the curbside window. 

We sit in a comfortable car.

Wide as a bus.

In the back, the armrests hold barely an elbow.

They've got ashtrays tucked into them with little lids

That screech when you lift them.

Sit in a comfortable seat. Soft,

Like Grandma Pieroni’s couch.

Your hands are active in the back,—
Probing, slapping, picking.

In front, once you’ve turned the knobs
They have little to do.

Seat belts are on the drawing-board at the Buick

Division of General Motors.

Call out the names of the passing cars

Rumbling in the other direction.

The ventilation is on, the windows are open

And the rushing air to the inside
Is sweeping discarded paper goods around us.

My little brother tries to catch them in flight.

I’d like to slap the back of my sister’s head.

I wanted to go to Lincoln Park.

The adults there walk measuredly, looking around

At the same things they’ve looked at for years.

Everybody’s fat and eating something.

The kids are allowed to run only when they’ve closed-in

On the ride of their lives.

The best ones need two tickets.

The three ticket rides take you to hell and back

On a fast track.

My sister requested Reeds Road Beach.

Musical Beach. A fresh-water lake of still-red water

Where mosquitos stand on their toes.

My sister likes the music played over the loud speakers.

She liked “Rocket 88” and “That’s all right Mama.”

She could swim and float.

At Lincoln Park we knew the secret of negotiating 

The “House of Mirrors."

Look down at the floor and follow it.

It’s the easy way to walk out.
Help the little kids screaming for their mothers.

We’d backtrack to beat the system, bumping into

The lost souls feeling the giant mirrors with their hands.

Look at her, sitting in the front seat like she owns it.

I’d like to slap the back of my sister's head.

My friend laughs, daring me to to it.

Look at how silently she sits in her place at the front.

I see his eyes hooked by her hair going crazy
In the surging breeze of the open windows.

I don’t yet realize what it is about her.

Now we’re heading to ‘Musical Beach,”— a standing red-water

And the increased possibility of contracting tuberculosis.
On her request.
And her request was all that was needed.




                                               Quequechan