Pleasantville, New Jersey, 1955

I’d never seen a rainbow or picked

a tomato off the vine. Never walked in an orchard

or a forest. The only tree I knew

grew in the square of dirt hacked

out of the asphalt, the mulberry

my father was killing slowly, pounding

copper nails into its trunk.

But one hot summer afternoon

my mother let me drag the cot onto the roof.

Bedsheets drying on the lines,

the cat’s cardboard box of dirt in the corner,

I lay in an expanse of blueness. Sun rippled

over my skin like a breeze over water.

My eyelids closed. I could hear the ripe berries

splatting onto the alley, the footsteps

of customers tracking in the sticky purple mash.

I heard the winos on the wooden crates,

brown bags rustling at the throats of Thunderbird.

Car engines stuttered, came to life, and died

in the A&P parking lot and I smelled grease and coffee

from the diner where Stella, the dyke, washed dishes,

a pack of Camels tucked

in the rolled-up sleeve of her T-shirt.

Next door, Helen Schmerling leaned on the glass case

slipping her fist into seamed and seamless stockings,

nails tucked in, to display the shade, while Sol

sucked the marrow from his stubby cigar,

smoke settling into the tweed skirts and mohair sweaters.

And under me something muscular swarmed

in the liquor store, something alive

in the stained wooden counter and the pungent dregs

of beer in the empties, the shorn pale necks

of the deliverymen, their hairy forearms,

my mother greeting everyone, her frequent laughter.

The cash register ringing

as my parents pushed their way, crumpled dollar

by dollar, into the middle class.

The sun was delicious, lapping my skin.

I felt that newly arrived in a body

as the city wheeled around me—

the Rialto Theater, Allen’s Shoe Store, Stecher’s Jewelers,

the whole downtown three blocks long.

And I was at the center of our tiny

solar system flung out on the edge

of a minor arm, a spur of one spiraling galaxy,

drenched in the light.