Word Simple. Harold J. Recinos

make it

      feel a world

      without end.

      But looking

      out the window

      at the strained street,

      I recalled

      the smell of the

      bar where Sonia

      dissolved

      dreams

      dancing near

      naked for greasy

      men who

      emptied their pockets

      of change for a

      peak.

      my heart twisted

      remembering

      the day Sonia

      said Johnny the

      cop wanted her

      to be his

      perfect girl.

      I cried recalling

      the walk in the

      little park where

      Sonia stepped on a dry leaf

      that crunched so loudly

      beneath her foot she

      whispered—that is

      life for me. I looked

      up at the moon with

      my wet eyes stared

      it in the face to say Sonia

      with her choked heart

      is trying to outlast

      these splitting

      days.

      Charmed

      she sits in a rocking chair going

      back to the stories that charmed

      her heart for hours, tales read in

      the dim light of a child’s room

      that shaped excitement with the

      simple turn of a page, heroines

      met in the woods, Cinderella losing

      a shoe, God walking in garden, a

      Pegasus in the sky pushing cotton

      ball clouds, journeys to the bottom

      of the sea, young boys chasing down

      glory, and clocks with blind delight

      relaxing the forward march of time.

      in her aged imagination the entire world

      is no more than a miniature country, a

      lonely dwelling, the fading earth, a thing

      meant to be vaguely understood. the seasons

      speak to her now in long sentences that last

      well into the night, they forget sometimes

      to smile at her, but unafraid of all this change

      the old woman simply waits for the future

      always in the quiet room reaching for simple

      plans and the warmth of light.

      The Apartment Visit

      the last time I visited Carmen

      she said the neighbors upstairs

      are stealing her mail. some nights

      she imagines they are standing just

      outside her apartment door casting

      spells to turn her hours into ice cold

      stone. when you walk by her door

      on the third floor of the building it’s

      easy to hear her talking to her dead

      son about the days they use to go out

      dancing in the Bronx clubs Tito Puente

      played, the aluminum Christmas tree

      they would put up each year with a

      rainbow colored spot light shining in

      a dark living room on it, the trips to

      Orchard Beach to stand looking over