-in this photograph-

prologue / the exteriors

the narrow, dirt-filled roadway they stand on
is designated as Way Street.

Way Street sits perpendicular to

and abutting tar-patched Healy Street.

to the immediate left of the plane

sits a small meadow of stiff, barren
overgrowth, no more of yellow than creased khaki
and to its left,  just out of frame, is Rachlin’s Junkyard.

running parallel to Healy, eastward, (looking into the document)

beyond the backyards and tenement houses 

lies traffic-filled Bedford Street.
between these streets, the salt of life, the arcing
clotheslines of the tenements air-dry the sheets and the heavy,
durable cloth of the working-class.

In this photograph, you’re looking at the back-

side of my burgeoning world.

four of the grade-school kids standing

side-by-side in a crooked row, saluting patriotically, are my cousins.

my sister, nearly three years my elder, barely in kindergarten,
is standing with them to the right of the line.

the world war is at its end and love of Country

is evident,— albeit a love screened by Hollywood

and the morning grammar school's droning recital 
of its pledge of allegiance.

the wooden rifle perched on cousin Johnny’s shoulder
has been fashioned in found wood by his Uncle Frank,

the great shoe-cobbler by trade to the textile laborers,
the utility and municipal service workers of the southend of town.

the rifle is jackknife cut, hand-planed  

and sanded smooth to the touch

without the addition of detailed functions.
"they won't work anyway".

I’m barely born.

everything is waiting for me.
the viewer is encouraged to walk into
and through the document, eastward from Way Street,
(feel free to toss a fast meadow stone into the junkyard's windshields)
cross Healy, hop the fence to the craggy backyards

teeming with productive grapevines

tangled beneath the airing of the lines,
pass the vegetable gardens where
the hornworms pant for tomatoes,

slither between the raw-weathered wood

of the shingled tenement houses, pass into and through

the atmosphere of sauces, of olive-

oils, onion, garlic and the baker's sweet, oven-crusted breads

to the open activeness of Bedford Street and the face

of what will become the enchantment of my early life.

                                                Quequechan