The Neighborhood by Jennifer Reeser
I wish I could, like some, forget, and never anguish, nor regret,
dismissive, free to roam the street, no matter how the visions meet.
Remembrance is a neighborhood where convicts live with great and good,
its roads of red, uneven brick, whose surfaces – both rough and slick –
spread out into a patchwork plan. Sometimes at night I hear a man
vault past the fence, and cross the yard, my door chain down, and me off-guard.
He curses, threatens, pounds the door. I’m wedged between the couch and floor,
ungainly, barefoot, limp and pinned, scared of the dark, without a friend,
with only one clear thought, that I – like him, like you – don’t want to die.
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