Thursday, March 29, 2012

Suburban Barricades


Suburban Barricades


In a box someplace there’s a photo, black

and white, me and some others clustered near

the curb in the standard garb for that place,

that time, heads like spuds under waxed crew cuts,

dead ringer I was for the kid in the

ad on the back of the Marvel mags, the

grainy one for Grit, doughy and pealed (who

answered those things anyway?) all of us

arrayed around the knife man squeezed into

his three wheeled ride, a rolling phone booth, a

giant boot, dirge bell giving him away

blocks away, giving our mothers time to

gather their dull blades and dance out the door

brandishing boning and butcher,

paring and steak, carving and bread knives, shears,

dull steel in need of honing, headlong for

the street, in another place, another

time well-armed partisans rushing to fill  

a gap in the barricades bristling with

arms, our glorious mothers repelling

the final charge while we look on askance, 

Phrygian caps hiding potato heads. 







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