When We Lived Out Front
Long ago, before you came to live
and but few of us who yet live remember,
we all moved out back to burn meat
on decks behind tall stockade fences
to escape from saying hello to neighbors
we came to only know to say hello to,
and to keep whoever in hell they were
for real from peering at our kids
splashing and peeing in plastic pools,
that is before square screened teevees
with grainy color, the men drowsed
on summer evenings after a supper
of meatloaf, mashed spuds and peas
the color of army helmets, with suspenders
drooped on heavy couches called gliders
that slid them gently back and forth,
hidden behind screened-in porches,
with only the suck of their cigarettes
flaring like red eyes in black jungle night
betraying their half-lidded watching
as they heard a ballgame’s drone
without listening until a bat cracked
and the dull mutter leapt alive
into urgent chattering, and a wife,
done for the day came out drying hands
on a crumpled apron to abruptly
switch the knob to a crooner, lamenting,
perhaps, that whenever we kiss
I worry and wonder, and after plopping
down to fan herself began to talk
about who she talked about and about
whom she talked with about them
on the telephone, and then talked out
she watched the girls jump-rope
out in the street, chanting pom-pom-
pompadour while one skipped outside
and another inside the flailing whirl,
pretending to ignore the boys on bikes
circling them, doing skidding stops
and wheelies and whooping like Indians
played by Italians in the movies, until one,
head low to the handlebars, sped in
to flip a ponytail like young braves
counting coup, and then they all raced
away, pumping pedals, jingling bells
and honking derisive squawks
like farts squeezed from bulbed horns,
like the one hanging from Harpo’s belt
because his shtick was that he could
or could not talk, and at the end
of the block the boys perched spraddle-
legged on bikes to gloat at the girl’s
outraged lamentations with raucous jeers
at their promises to tell, but this hubbub
brought out mothers, who back then
knew in the wise way mothers knew
that if the boys failed to harass them
the girls would tease them until they did,
onto the stoops to cup their mouths
with their hands like megaphones
and call home their broods by name,
and, as dusk deepened on the all-
of-a-sudden silent street, those slumped
in torpid doze inside their screens
could wake to hear a chanting steadily arise
to cease all at once, as if to pause
for silent prayer before a murmuring buzz
began again hidden in solemn shadows
where thick boughs of soaring elms
intermingled to vault a lofty tunnel
covering the street all the way down
to its end where a pure white blaze
of city lights seemed the promise
a future, which is, of course, this now
that for a few years yet is where we live
together as coevals, where our people
are doing their living inside glowing screens
they keep always budded in their ears,
mute tablets always talking without
talking to fill the insatiable yearning
for hearing, and when they stand outside,
front or back, to smoke hunching
against the wind, they cup one hand
over one ear against the steady groan
of truculent pickup trucks that own
the streets, whispering into phones
held to the other ear, watching
with furtive eyes for shapes to appear
on black sliding doors, like ghosts
of ones they once loved and now fear.
and but few of us who yet live remember,
we all moved out back to burn meat
on decks behind tall stockade fences
to escape from saying hello to neighbors
we came to only know to say hello to,
and to keep whoever in hell they were
for real from peering at our kids
splashing and peeing in plastic pools,
that is before square screened teevees
with grainy color, the men drowsed
on summer evenings after a supper
of meatloaf, mashed spuds and peas
the color of army helmets, with suspenders
drooped on heavy couches called gliders
that slid them gently back and forth,
hidden behind screened-in porches,
with only the suck of their cigarettes
flaring like red eyes in black jungle night
betraying their half-lidded watching
as they heard a ballgame’s drone
without listening until a bat cracked
and the dull mutter leapt alive
into urgent chattering, and a wife,
done for the day came out drying hands
on a crumpled apron to abruptly
switch the knob to a crooner, lamenting,
perhaps, that whenever we kiss
I worry and wonder, and after plopping
down to fan herself began to talk
about who she talked about and about
whom she talked with about them
on the telephone, and then talked out
she watched the girls jump-rope
out in the street, chanting pom-pom-
pompadour while one skipped outside
and another inside the flailing whirl,
pretending to ignore the boys on bikes
circling them, doing skidding stops
and wheelies and whooping like Indians
played by Italians in the movies, until one,
head low to the handlebars, sped in
to flip a ponytail like young braves
counting coup, and then they all raced
away, pumping pedals, jingling bells
and honking derisive squawks
like farts squeezed from bulbed horns,
like the one hanging from Harpo’s belt
because his shtick was that he could
or could not talk, and at the end
of the block the boys perched spraddle-
legged on bikes to gloat at the girl’s
outraged lamentations with raucous jeers
at their promises to tell, but this hubbub
brought out mothers, who back then
knew in the wise way mothers knew
that if the boys failed to harass them
the girls would tease them until they did,
onto the stoops to cup their mouths
with their hands like megaphones
and call home their broods by name,
and, as dusk deepened on the all-
of-a-sudden silent street, those slumped
in torpid doze inside their screens
could wake to hear a chanting steadily arise
to cease all at once, as if to pause
for silent prayer before a murmuring buzz
began again hidden in solemn shadows
where thick boughs of soaring elms
intermingled to vault a lofty tunnel
covering the street all the way down
to its end where a pure white blaze
of city lights seemed the promise
a future, which is, of course, this now
that for a few years yet is where we live
together as coevals, where our people
are doing their living inside glowing screens
they keep always budded in their ears,
mute tablets always talking without
talking to fill the insatiable yearning
for hearing, and when they stand outside,
front or back, to smoke hunching
against the wind, they cup one hand
over one ear against the steady groan
of truculent pickup trucks that own
the streets, whispering into phones
held to the other ear, watching
with furtive eyes for shapes to appear
on black sliding doors, like ghosts
of ones they once loved and now fear.
