~
Black Cat Firecracker
I must’ve been about seven when I saw this:
a teenage boy, to impress my neighbor’s older sister,
let a firecracker explode in his open palm.
I was in the circle of four kids: me, J.J.,
his sister, and the idiot, who was astride his bike.
It was in a side yard, between the Johnson’s and the Padallero’s.
Homes were sheathed in painted wood.
Stone stairs wore pastel slates, and front doors
had aluminum storms and scrollwork
at the corners of the screens.
The idiot wore a leather coat, so it was fall, shady, cool.
The street there went up a hill, and the lawn was steep
and I knew firecrackers from play in July,
knew a tuna can would fly sky high.
From here, I can tell the guy was stupid
on hormones, thinking this would lead on
to marriage, or at least the bower of bliss,
the place where fuzzy sweaters are doffed
like hats, and breasts released to eager hands
and a higher plane of existence exhibited
in high school halls by walking together,
fingers entwined, a spectacle of domesticity.
You gotta hand it to the guy, he had good taste:
a perky ponytail, a button nose, Sissy was the real,
the goal, the whole McCoy. If she was woke,
in ‘68, in any way the next wave, she was likely
unimpressed. But the Johnson house was not
like that: there you got ethnic slurs,
I learned what a lie was when J.J. stole my favorite toy,
which is why I’m laying it bare now, like an open palm,
and hoping there is a moral universe and that,
when J.J. grew up he lost something he loved,
and thinking on it now, where were my parents
in this? Why couldn’t they get it back?
Were we just more Jews in Johnson-land?
For goodness’ sake, even the president had that name!
In the event, the fuse burned down, the doofus
kept his hand, although it was a cracked palm
with smoke curling from bloody fissures,
and I’d like to say he got the girl, but I doubt
any of us got what we wanted, except me,
and this is more than fifty years ago,
and in a way my life exploded just as fine,
or else I maybe have a sense my fuse
is burning still, slowly going across my palm
like a promise to impress myself gone wrong,
and finding that the screen door has no latch,
and anyway what’s storm door for,
if not to let in storm?
~
David Epstein
David Epstein, Ph.D., has lived in Connecticut since 2000. He repairs old buildings and likes racing small sailboats. Father of three, he won three poetry prizes in 2021. He has work in New Square and in Olney Magazine online; recent poetry publications include Marsh Hawk Review and The Bellingham Review. He is a Board Member of the Hartford Friends and Enemies of Wallace Stevens.