Back Draft

Flat. The scenery was flat.
Paper houses, and cellophane
children. Their voices screech,
owls on the hunt.
Sound
wafting through an aluminum background
I composed as a child.

Imagine a movie where the actors
aren’t acting. They're standing,
sitting, rationalizing
what they are supposed to be doing --
only no one is doing
a thing. Change the channel.

The boy next door wasn’t home,
or he was except he forgot
to watch
through the window. His mother furious
with him the night before threatened: If I find you on that sill
one more time it will be the end of it!
Not knowing what “the end of it” would be,
he forgot to watch.

Sometimes the night comes early
and the street lights aren’t ready–

there are laws to abide by, cosmic occurrences
pre-commissioned to subtly
(or not so subtly)
remind us there is a reason
for everything:

My brother is a thief by nature, banned
from every store Jersey through Pennsylvania.
The women he held company with have all
been thieves as well.

This, of course, would mean nothing
in concurrence with this poem
except that it does:

Paper houses, children screeching,
actors
who aren’t acting,
and a boy who always watches
what the neighbors are doing instead
of doing whatever it is he should be doing. His mother, unaware

of why she finally
had enough with his dilly-dallying,
came to apologize
when she read in the paper
that I had been robbed.



©  Maria Lupinacci