-down on 8th street.
 the "Pier 14" barroom is ground-zero there-

1.
we,— and by “we” I mean my family, as well as
just about every other family in the neighborhood,

referred to ourselves as Italian, and by “Italian” I mean

anyone with an ancestral link to mainland Italy,

like say, a grandparent or two.

our parents were working class (and by that I mean)

our fathers and oftentimes our mothers

worked for wages in order to “make ends meet”—
were paid by the week with Company checks
quickly endorsed at the kitchen tables, the money represented
vanishing as fast as a sly magician's ink.

In the early 50s, black people were living

in a small congregation someplace else to the west,

but they lived among a sprinkling of white people
same as the Italians did to the east.

we (my friends and I) had a standing curiosity

of the blacks living "down there", mostly due
to the perceived, mysterious ways of life down on 8th street,
off Bedford, shadowed by the "Pier 14" barroom between 7th and 9th,

(and I say that simply because there was a 9th street)
not many small city blocks from our neighborhood.

the blacks seemed formidable, or so we imagined;
invincible, as we fantasized to justify our deliberate romance of them.

as for the environment down on 8th street,
we saw it as a notch in status below our own.

our houses appeared to be in better shape,

the cars of our fathers changed positions
at the curbside from time to time (on four inflated tires)
and we had a ballpark close enough that a foul ball 
would break the window of whomever's name was on it.

our neighborhood had an immediate church
and by "immediate" I mean nearly indelible,

within eyesight, nearly inescapable, its tall stained-glass 
windows lit-up like kaleidoscopes during the incense-
burning fragrance of the nighttime benedictions.

God was on our side,— the frantic,

animated side of the crazy, wild-handed Italians.

2.
In time, the haunting mysteries
down on 8th street would vanish
along with the otherworldly "Pier 14" barroom
as would the neighborhood of Italians

as would the "one true church", erased of its congregation
through inevitable non-compliance
as would the ballpark as we knew it
and the cars parked at curbside down on 8th street
began running, leaving on four inflated tires, returning by nightfall.