Boundary Street, 1980s

Home smells like cinnamon, dust and fresh-cut grass.

Maybe a little sweat.

Every day there’s something to do so that the house

Shines like a good Sunday school student.

Daddy preaches, teaches, talks and smiles

Momma cleans and teaches, talks and preaches,

Buries her dreams in the dirt of the garden.

We gather in church basements, casseroles

and old lady smells with their blue hair

and their crinkled eyes

and I don’t know any of their names but they all know mine.

Boundary Street because it marked the end of the town as it was

Cornfield on one side, city on the other,

Which made us a little bit country

A little bit rock and roll.

Or really just in between both, but not enough of either.

At 10pm on a Saturday night there is no sound but snoring

Then the gentle slide of a window as my sister sneaks out

To meet someone on the dusty path between city and country

So they can go and be one thing

Or the other.

We don’t use slang in our house,

we speak as the scholars my parents want us to be,

We children daring to use “darn” and “jeez” in silent cursing

That will be punished with nothing.

We fear another load of zucchini

miraculously appearing in the trunk of our car

Because there aren’t enough recipes in the world to use it all up.

But it is a sign of the love church folk have for their pastor

And sometimes the only gift they can give.

We hope that when Daddy goes on reserve (cause he’s Navy too)

We’ll get to go out to eat at a fancy restaurant

Like A & W

Where you can order from a telephone right at your booth

And when dad comes back, he’ll have tiny treats!

Little bottles of soap and shampoo and tiny slivers of soap

wrapped like presents,

which we three kids will fight over

and use to the last drop, then recycle the bottles for

play.

My parents, who let us know that

Living on the Boundary

Was neither good nor bad,

It just was

A state of being that existed,

Like lines drawn in the sand,

Like words written on the garage in spray paint

That my brother had to scrub

With harsh soap and a brush

Until the doors were white

And sweat dripped into his eyes.