armed with baseball bats,

the park we learned to call Cockroach,

the kids who smiled when they asked if you wanted to play.

Pass the bullet hole missing the haunt of its smoke.

Pass the 21A and its late song.

Pass the broken glass, translucent shark fins cemented on top of backyard

gates.

Pass the gas station horoscopes rolled tight as cigarettes.

Pass the thin brown carpet where you lay down and could not believe any

further in true love.

Pass the brown women and men practicing their dances in the front yard.

Pass the parking lot where that boy flashed a gun.

Pass the asphalt where you did the worm and landed your first kickflip,

the hungover white Vietnam Vet and the Black Panther,

both of whom wanted to teach you karate to defend yourself.

Pass the empty lot your older brother convinced you was haunted,

even the flashlight you pretended was a lightsaber did not give you courage.

Pass the ghost of your first kiss on the playground at Anderson Elementary,

by beached concrete playground cylinders that looked like bomb shelters.

Pass the loops of graffiti, arches of bridges collapsing on themselves.

Pass the street whose number you don’t even know,

a lover’s curve starting between McDonald’s and 35W

back to Phillips, by the beautiful office building that made weapons of war.

Pass a small brown boy in a Batman shirt,

pointing at you, teaching himself to say your name

not so far from where, years before,

kids found a way to make your alien name

a wound.

Pass every streetlight,

without your glasses they look so much like stars.

Peeking through the Back Door of the Commodore

—For R. Vincent Moniz Jr.

Glow and ping of pinball.

A fan blowing,

oil-slick rainbow arch of a jukebox.

Windowless dark is where adults do adult things.

Far from here and years later,

young white people will make bars with floor-to-ceiling glass

so all can see who they’re drinking with,

brew their own beer and whisper recipes,

charcuterie techniques—

over which they will fall in love.

In Phillips the Commodore may or may not have been filled

with drinkers who definitely could not give a shit if you saw them.

Little brown boys who illegally skateboarded

in the shadows of buildings named after big men,

we walked by quiet—

as if God were watching as we knew she was—

rectangle of dark, open in the bright sun of a school day.

I could tell you there were noises of pool cues

struck on the side of scuffed tables,

jagged ends jabbed at friends drunkenly confessing

sleeping with so-and-so’s wife,

cowboy music followed by 80s R & B

quips switchblade quick

about fuck your football team and so-and-so’s music is bullshit and

it’s all going to shit anyway, but

I’d be lying.

Mostly that square dark door stayed

dark and quiet.

Reading too much Greek mythology

did the rest.

Vince says, I thought that place

was so soaked in blood and tears