Years from now,
when facing the hand ball court,
he will remember the day
he perfected a dead killer

Marquez Elementary School

My oldest friend
and I
broke in over
the chain link fence
grown men reclaiming
or rather
claiming
an idealized narrative
of our youth
The upper field
where once the concrete
playground
seemed as spacious
as the manifest destiny
of our futures
trailers installed
permanently as
classrooms
crowd the
landscape
of the potential energy
of our memories
but that afternoon
Ben and I were
Greek Gods
Never had handball
been played so powerfully
the scale of our
middle-aged bodies
against the
indexterous earnestness
of our seven-year-old selves
for that was what was
at stake.

In town,
gone are familiar stores
new enterprises
fill the spaces
where the ghosts
of my childhood
still linger

In front of the ice cream store
recently gone
after 50 years
imprinted in
concrete like a
welcome mat
was my name
enshrined in a square
of concrete
along with
Ben, Bill, and Jerry’s.
It made me giddy
to show it to you
like a child
sharing a secret
and you were
generous
in your
delight
never mind
how banal
this little geographic
quirk
it’s still a
birthmark

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