-The phone call-

Beyond the dense

head-high hedge at the grapevine

across the yard next door and up the stairs

to the second-floor tenement,

the Pieroni family lived much the same

type of life we lived in our tenement,
called "our house".

From the north-side windows, the Church

could be seen rising from the slow hill
beyond left field,— and from the south, the junkyard.

The matriarch next door,

an aunt on my mother’s side

whose name was Olympia, called “Lee”—

was the person my mother would call

on the telephone whenever she determined

that I had a "fever" and was in need

of an immediate enema.

Olympia would carry the orange bladder

and its ominous black-tongued tentacle

across her yard and through the kid-

fashioned portal of the hedge to our yard

and into the first floor tenement, my house,
where I was found under my bed

tucked into the farthest corner of the wall.

The broom-head swept me out.

Water warms on the gas stove.

At the kitchen sink,
Olympia’s systematic procedure

was “captivating” to witness,

akin to wartime prisoners transfixed

at the cold preparation of North Korean bamboo shoots.

I'll not testify herein on the merits of what happened next.

  

Olympia was small of stature,
a formidable woman and one hell-of-a practitioner.


                                                  Quequechan