Hot City Sidewalks

 

before she knew

all fifty states

her father beat his fist

steady as a heartbeat

on an old screen door down the block

it was May, I think

some time for shorts

 

she squirmed in the background

a poster child of name-calling

one knee scabbed, one just plain old skinny

“your son did this” he called from the

bottom of the concrete stair

 

she looked down on us in a

nightgown on a Monday

and simply said “no”

for the boy who’d failed

the first grade three times

 

he hid, or maybe not

in his bedroom, trains and crayons

while she kicked garbage

on a hot sidewalk

 

but she was there, she held her aching scalp

from all the pulling on the

only time in history she had braids

past her shoulder blades

 

to this day

fragments of a

girl too small for

things like politics

and death

are

 

buried

 

in the smoke

that dances upwards

from a hot city sidewalk