Junk, and: A Moment

Junk

The rusty hills of iceboxes mattresses’ swollen ripped bellies still grinding engines rusty razor blades reflecting a discarded kingdom of gurgling toilets stinking up our backyard where rats sought refuge the gum bumps my knees scraped under my third grade desk the spinning red stools’ tops at the Model Diner where I sat alone each endless school day among blistered forests of thumbs shadowed eyes shaky hands going and coming from Bonds DuPont’s and Bausch Lomb the icy Genesee Falls I skipped rocks off playing hooky nowhere else to hide except maybe Main Street cracking under the weight of its own lethargy the static voices announcing Saturday’s Yankee games all the way from New York City the Friday night drunks waltzing outside Ringo’s Bar & Grill kids lining up to peep into Susie’s older sister’s second cousin’s bathroom window the pasties swirling inside Fancy Abe’s neon lit den of iniquity Grandma angry at the goose-stepping newsreels showing Europe burning the stampeding buffalo in Panavision the empty cemetery plots waiting patiently after Father died Moses’s furious brows staring down from the peeling Big Shul ceiling Mother whispering an off-key dementia lullaby not recognizing my wife or her grandchild though I looked familiar the fireworks over Lake Ontario every Fourth of July promising everything would be OK the old Polish woman screaming on the downtown bus even after everyone got off like she could see what was coming Grandma talking in Russian to someone in her sleep who wanted to burn her house down the musty tools books and clothes in the unheated back room the orphan tin on the kitchen door the tiny never smiling rabbi who came every other Tuesday the snow burying all the unhappy houses the stained-glass attic window where I sat counting all the hours before I could leave

A Moment

A measurement of time in which dogs live without regret or desire to enhance their reputation and personal worth. An idea designed to shelter contentment and regulate fretfulness. A request for calm and further reflection. A pause or hesitation used as a defense against a horrid memory or fear of the corner. A stall for time in order to regain one’s reasonableness and equilibrium. An allotment requested by those who’ve used up their other options. A plea for calm. A ubiquitous cave of sanity. An end without a beginning. A room in which bad news resides. A wall behind which nothing more waits to happen. A desperate limitation. A grain of sand. A last breath. A vast opportunity. A plea to begin over again.