USA

Nhaiduck@aol.com

Louie’s Paradise

Our Lover’s Lane was at the end of Bronx River Avenue,
through a vacant lot, down a rubble hill, across the tracks,
to a rocky beach and a quiet oil-slicked river, a silver ribbon
winding between junk yards and garages. Louie discovered it,
so we named our hideaway in his honor. Better than a hallway,
cooler than the roof, dark as the balcony of Loew’s Paradise
on Fordham Road, our waterfront was a secret everyone knew,
but now no one can find.

Home

It is still there:
Chester’s Typewriters in blue Courier letters
in the top margin of a trim shop,
a single plate glass balancing
five stories of dark red brick, shielding
Royals, Smith-Coronas, Underwoods
from the digital era,
a young man with dreadlocks tinkers with the underbelly
of an Olympia at the repair bench in the back,
the wispy old man grins, I just sold one ten minutes ago,
a senior citizen wants to type a letter,
Do I know you?
He used to fix my borscht-colored 1963 IBM electric
with the carriage return that rattled my make-shift desk,
a plywood board on two file cabinets,
We opened next door to the RKO Theatre before the war.
He meant World War 2, I never noticed
the Alps Motel is in a theatre,
RKO chiseled in the stone facade
hidden behind the black line of the El,
a whore house sitting out on the glass-glittered avenue
with the Middle School, the liquor store, the bodega.

Squeals needle our conversation,
then crack the Saturday afternoon surface,
like an alarm,
zigzags of two girls, jackets open,
legs splaying, tumble
toward a sagging building, shrieks
pound, shoulders push the steel door
with the broken lock, a fist in a dungaree sleeve
grips a pouch of water, a goldfish
shimmers like a rainbow in a tear drop --
only two stories to go.

Unemployed in Spring

The sun opens like a daffodil,
Bright yellow hats tossed
Through the wide windows,
The first day of Spring
Scattered all over the floor.
Nothing moves inside,
Except the curtains, slightly
Swayed by children’s sidewalk chatter,
Come on back, Mike,
We didn’t mean to call you Jug Ears,
We like you, Mike, and your ears,
Hey, Dora, don’t you like Mike’s ears?

They take blue sky for granted,
Don’t even notice forsythia
Trumpeting their way to school,
While I’m standing in my underwear
Stunned by the sun drumming the walls,
Squeezing me out of my house:
Get dressed,
Get coffee,
Get going,
As the man next door shuts the car door,
Snaps the seat belt, starts
His destination.

And I’m wondering what to do,
Where to go
On the first day of Spring.

Youth

The bruise on her upper lip could be
mistaken for a birthmark,
a small track to be washed away
with a Turkish cloth and Ivory.
With time the injury could be forgiven,
for richer or poorer, in sickness and health.
But what could she know of the future,
at 30 she thought she was old.
Marie, the bookkeeper, decades
wiser, pressed in her hand each week
a brown envelope, her salary
in cash to pay the sitter and to keep
from him who would save himself,
but not yet.

Each weekday morning she climbed
to the office loft on the second floor
of O’Connor & Perez Insurance Inc. --
and there was Marie’s reliable smile.
She settled at her desk on the green
carpet the color of a pool table
under a lamp turned on with a tug
of string. The office manager, tapping
her lip, said “What?” But Marie
overruled, “I brought in cake,”
she smiled, not ever to know
how much that smile was worth.

Tinnitus Gravis

It’s like living on a boat,
the motor humming steadily
or by a highway, cars droning endlessly,
a noisy old refrigerator always in the room,
a computer in the ear that never shuts down,
an undercurrent of all conversations,
concerts, confessions.
Even in the stillness of a starry night
in a country field in Spring,
there it is:
the constant tone that drove Bedrich Smetana insane,
kind of like I might go insane,
turning off tv, radio, websites,
throwing out newspapers, magazines, still
there it is:
the sound of war that never stops.

© All Copyright, Nancy Haiduck.
All Rights Reserved. Printed By Permission.