–I want–    (bronze medalist at "the 5th floor poet's jamboree")

I want time enough for time to slow itself down to a heartbeat

and another five years to reflect upon certain outcomes.

I want the silver dollar uncle Octavio flipped to me

before he fled to Lucca leaving us one Pieroni short of a dozen.

I want to share another vanilla coke with the otherwise incorrigible

Norena Ferreira, (two rows to my left and three desks down)

swiveling at my side at the soda fountain at the "Pleasant Drugs" Pharmacy,

where half-a-mile north (Lemuel Street) goofy Chuck Meville’s old man

hung himself inside his vacant one car garage and where three weeks

wheeling forward (September 12, 1954) I’d crack-up my Schwinn "Hornet"

a real beauty, into the chain-linked fence of the "Oak Grove" Cemetery where

the remaining significance of Lizzie Borden decomposes quietly long after

being found not guilty (June 20, 1893) of the frantic charges filed against her

(patricide and matricide) but things as they are the Pieroni clan sans Octavio

marched on without skipping a beat, and as for Lizzie. I think she did it.

Quequechan