This poem originally appeared in print in The Emerson Review, 2009, Vol. 38
~
“A Clean, Well-Lighted Place”
“We’ll fix it up real nice,” Mother said.
It wasn’t true.
It could never be true. It was two rooms
on the third floor of a five-story tenement:
paper-thin walls, cracked linoleum, stained porcelain.
Everything covered by successive generations
of nacreous crud. A rubberized dirt layered
so thick it rendered scrubbing superfluous.
She did the best she could,
but it was a dump, like all the others.
“You’ll still have your own room,” she told me.
That was true. Half the back room was crowded
with furniture stacked to the ceiling.
The other half was clear.
And there was my bed
over by the window, already made.
The window overlooked an alley that dead ended
into a clapboard maze
of clotheslines and dog fouled streets.
“You’ll like it,” Mother said, “you’ll see.”
~
From Michael Campagnoli: In the past, I taught writing and literature while studying for a PhD and worked at a variety of jobs including house painter, journalist, fisherman, and short-order cook. Currently, I proofread/line-edit the local newspaper and coach schoolboy baseball.