-the soda-jerk at the drug store and so on-

I know of a soda fountain at the Oak Grove Pharmacy
on the corner of Bedford Street

and the Avenue for which it is named.

there, you can order hot

fudge sundays, banana splits,

malts and lime-rickeys.

when the pills are ready, the pharmacist

will call out whatever name is on the prescription.
It's a long walk from the counter to where
the pharmacist stands on-high, exposing only
his shoulders to his head, and he shouts out the names
of the sick who need their pills with authority. 

the soda-jerk behind the counter is an older kid we know
because his sister is a grade school friend of my sister.

out the front window is the street where we live.

across the street, the girl I like lives in the big grey

tenement house, third floor, with a washing machine on the piazza.

out there, the people are walking by.

men with tilted hats on their heads,
women with pocketbooks clutched under their armpits.

the cars parked on the street look heavy,

dressed in gleaming metals, fenders like dirigibles. 

new-styled "panoramic" windshields distort the landscape.

the school we go to is straight up the avenue towards the cemetery.
K through 6.

inside the drug store's soda fountain area, music is played

through portable transistor radios lying on their backs on the counter.

the music is convincing but constricted, circulating
inside the walls of the little, plastic transistors.
it's only the restlessness of early rock n' roll which finds its way out.

my older sister is with me, and my younger brother.

the pills are for our grandfather,

our mother’s father who has sugar diabetes.

I saw a black growth on the side of the little

toe of his left foot one night as his wife, our grandmother,

our mother’s mother, soaked and patted his foot in a shallow

basin on the floor of the parlor in front of the television.

later in the month his foot was amputated in Boston.

later in the year his sight began to fail and he died soon after.

I thought he'd be buried in the backyard

near the grapevine he cultivated and meticulously tended,––
laid to rest back there with the growing list of cats and parakeets,

but they packed him off to the funeral home

just beyond Marzilli's Bakery across the street
from DeSpirito Brothers barbershop.

but before all of that, the soda-jerk
is serving his paying customers.

my sister, my brother and me are spinning on our stools
at the slurping counter waiting for our grandfather's pills.

                                                                Quequechan