MAYDAY

Dad Watches Us Walk to School, Watertown, 1959
by Cindy Veach

Contributed By:

It’s pouring. Mom’s pregnant again, on bed rest.

Kindergarten and first grade.

We’re allowed to walk to school. Alone.

 

He says he watched us from the window.

Leave the house in our yellow slickers.

Cross the street. Turn right. Holding hands.

 

He’s brought this memory up so many times—

My big brother. Me. Yellow slickers.

Crossing. Turning right. Holding hands—

 

that I can see us crossing, turning right,

holding hands, yellow slickers.

Does that make his memory mine?

 

 

 

 

Filed Under: Poetry

Further Reading

On Plumstead Common
by Bob Petersen

It’s October. Charlton and Chelsea gambol in crisp leaves, one chocolate, the other blond. They don’t care, don’t seem to know, we sometimes call them Vanessa and Duncan, sometimes Thomas and Jane, the pair in Cheyne Walk, not the equally apt Lady and her gamekeeper. They are just dogs, after all, overly friendly, frequently wet; […]

He Went That Way
by Nicholas Cormier III

They approach in a tactical formation. I hear boots, that familiar sound from basic training. Shuffling feet out of step. The numbers are unclear, more of them than me. Sit. That’s the instinct. No victory to be had in the fight. There’s a fight. They push me over. I crawl out into the middle of […]

On the Four Train to the Ends of the Moon by Rob Cook

In the boy’s hand the cell phone sleeping, a tiny animal. He found it this morning curled inside his coat pocket. When he places it against his ear, does the animal plant its eggs? When the boy presses it deeper, can he hear its brain trembling? Can he hear the man named Arturo sitting beside […]

%d bloggers like this: