On Jupiter Place. Nicholas Christopher

my friend

      her mother the widow

      had suffered a nervous breakdown

      so that Genevieve too

      was being raised by her grandmother

      herself a widow born in Sicily

      who carried a cane to ward off dogs

      and across the street from them

      Mr. Fallon the used car salesman

      who had no license

      and was driven to work

      by his wife a secret drinker

      that everyone knew about

      both of them tormented

      by their roughneck son

      who one day put me

      in a headlock until I turned blue

      and I knocked his tooth out

      and bloodied his nose

      and his mother screamed that I was a savage

      that we were all savages

      though in fact I rarely got into trouble

      and mostly kept to myself

      while my father all that time

      lived alone in the small apartment

      that had been our home

      before my mother was hospitalized

      and held down two jobs

      one to support us

      the other to pay her medical bills

      until finally she was released

      from the hospital

      and that first afternoon was resting

      in my grandmother’s room

      when I was brought in to her

      I hadn’t seen her in a long time

      she was pale and very thin

      her hair was cut short

      and I told her to get out

      of my grandmother’s bed

      out of her room

      I didn’t know who she was anymore

      maybe I never did or could —

      not the girl that danced

      until dawn on her wedding night

      or the middle-aged woman

      with ailments real and imaginary

      who withered beneath

      the weight of her fears —

      for when she died many years later

      having loved me (I know) as best she could

      she was still a stranger

       THE GRAVEYARD SHIFT

      I work the graveyard shift in a city of believers

      hunched over a steel desk in a cone of light

      facing a window with drawn blinds

      beyond which the innocents are being slaughtered

      in an enormous courtyard against all four walls

      firing squads rotating around the clock

      while masked men in the watchtowers

      keep count in red ink on red pads

      simultaneously recording and concealing

      the numbers of dead

      and nodding with each round of gunfire

      mumbling praise to their leader

      and his god whose righteousness and mercy

      he mirrors while I keep to my work

      with bowed head and unblinking eyes

      sorting papers affixing stamps

      having long ago given up trying

      to stop my ears or black out my fear

      my face burning not with shame but exhaustion

      for I only sleep a few hours a night

      and I eat once a day

      cold scrapple and rice porridge

      like a prisoner myself

      in a cell that requires no locks

      unable to recognize my own handwriting

      even when I’ve left myself a note

      reminding me of who I once was but never

      (anymore) what I might have been

      which later I crumple and burn

      in a standard issue ashtray

      the momentary lick of flame

      no more or less remote to me than a star