VROOM-VROOM
here it comes
Soon, too soon
the testosterone laden
or perhaps secretly UN-laden bikers
will take to the downtown re-opened streets
these morph-balls with their seemingly
unenforceable and yet illegal decibel-spewing machines
(The police have more important things to do
than sit downtown listening for the noise...)
Hey some say
it's downtown
get used to it
or as in a former downtown alderman's retort:
'If you don't like it
MOVE!'
But move we shan't. We're not to be out-sung:
If you don't like it
don't run for office in this peaceable town.
'Allons enfants de la patria'
The day of muffled crotch rocketry has arrived!
Attn: Mayor, Common Council
All protectors of the Common Weal
^,^
IN THE CENTER OF TOWN
The Five Points and points immediately east and west
is being renovated this summer.
It s a beautiful thing to see unfold from our
Odd Fellows windows
Not too many years ago during our tenancy here
artist Wis Guthrie divined his second Les Paul guitar
and displayed it outside these windows,
on this now repaved and outside-seating area-
enlarged street.
Today that just about-completed central site where Wis sits
in his latter year electric scooter -
the visage out our window is this:
DUST IN THE WIND https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tH2w6Oxx0kQ
^,^
My
Aunt Raises Violets from Africa
All those loose threads
from her sewing, trailing
off bobbins toward
Chattanooga,
Nashville, Myrtle Beach, Niagara
Falls. She snapped them at
the hem
with her teeth, those worn
hitching posts.
She never learned to
drive.
Didn’t leave Grandma’s
yard for thirty years.
Her Singer just
hummed.
She never stopped wearing
that engagement ring he gave her at
twenty,
measuring time by how deep
it sank into her finger
even after
he died, still her fiancé,
an old man living with his mother.
We only
whispered his name.
At night, after the Bible verses,
she’d coat herself with vapor
rub,
thick and Vicks blue,
then dial up the DJ
who knew her
voice,
yearning for the smooth of Englebert
soothing her into bed
back
to back with Grandma.
When I spent the night,
we’d tend the violets
lined like
bassinets
along the north;
double lavenders, crystal
stars, angel
blues, pink
persuasion. So careful.
We never touched their velvet
not
even the undersides.
We just turned them each day,
their faces
straining
toward the sun.
"My Aunt Raises Violets from Africa" by
Janice Moore Fuller
 
Don't I just wish
I had all the beautiful cobalt blue glass jars
my mother emptied, rubbing the salve
on my chest when she thought I might
be coming down with a cold.
Phew! Flannel rags took on a new meaning then.
^,^ Twilight time (The Platters)
(The golden 1950's)
^,^
KD Kat, the pigeon hunter 'sharpens' her claws on her post, then... were it not for window glass all hell would break loose pigeon feathers everywhere 
^,^
Bambi Airstream trailer and ice chest Other containers of note |
