Of Carolyn Dziok (rhymes with kayak)

                    

                  Carolyn Dziok lived throughout her youth nestled in her parents

                  house seated across the street from my second floor bedroom window

                  in the semi-pastoral district of the city known as the lower highlands.

                  It's where our first (and only) residential, single-family (three bedrooms upstairs)

                  house sat, tucked neatly into the neighborhood of avenues, manicured frontage

                  and calmer attitudes.

                  The highlife up the lower highlands:

                  With the summertime sun, my young father's sale's ledger is filled, page after page

                  by each month’s end and mounting commissions mean money in the bank.

                  He’s selling booze from his traveling Buick by the truckload across the Cape

                  from Buzzard’s Bay to Wellfleet. We're living high on the hog.

                  Stick a three cent on the envelope to Easy Street.

                  Paparazzo:

                  From a steamy Saturday morning’s secret window, Carolyn is seen washing

                  her farther’s sleek-finned Chevy Bel Air, hosing it down from the soapy street-

                  side of young romance.

                  The glitterati:

                  Tonight, she's at the front door dressed in a rare sighting, perfumed and spray-fixed

                  for the dance downtown, as my sister (three years my elder) skips down the staircase

                  to greet her slicker than Loretta Young.

                  I’m in the recess of the hallway keeping my mouth shut.

                  They’ll go to the dance dressed like the porcelain dolls who sit atop the glittering

                  bedroom dressers.

                  My father will drive them to their passions in his Roadmaster, the top liquor salesman’s                          heavy-footed rite of passage.

                  Tonight, they’ll sweep them off their feet across the dance-floor; the floral scent of Wind                      Song perfume with a Buick's lingering hint of Narraganset Lager Beer and Seagram's                         VO whispering through the blonde, near imperceptible filament of their arms.

                  Dolce:

                  I’ll be sleeping when he drives downtown to get them.

                  I’ll be sleeping when he brings them home.

                  In the morning I’ll be watching from the window.
                  Winter will set upon our good fortune soon enough.

                  1956? / 1957



    

                 

                 

-Thermo King 53-

The refrigeration unit of Thermo King 53

is humming along in tune to its somber mission.

The trailer, like other loads in past perishables
has no emotional connection to its current cargo.

A full load is but another full load for Thermo King 53.

But this time, Thermo King 53 is staying put.

Only its occupants are transported to someplace else

when the call comes at last,–– the agonized

call mapping the approach to a permanent rest.

The trailer in need of refrigeration is staying put.

Clipboards hung to a post on the loading dock

chart the path toward capacity for Thermo King 53.

New York, New York. 2020

-virus head-

Dateline Fall River:

three members of the Amaral family died

within a few days of each other due to

complications stemming from the Covid-19 virus.

the small grocery store which they owned

and worked tirelessly for–– and where I occasionally

shopped for emergency bread and eggs has closed its doors.

It won’t recover.

I’m scrambling my brain to remember the last time I was there,

carrying the little red plastic basket around the narrow aisles for

the staples I need in a hurry and for a few of those wonderful

spinach and broccoli flatbread sandwiches, individually wrapped in cellophane.

flowers wrapped in cellophane and teddybears are set at the door's foot.