a love poem from Duluth’s West End
Gilt words on a corner-store window
painted by a salesman they had likely outlived
Ann’s Market SALADA TEA
reflected street light and sun,
bright against the steamy green of houseplants
that obscured the inside.
We just called it “Ann’s.”
From the sidewalk the store looked dark;
inside, eyes adjusting
to the dim lighting, naked bulbs
on cords hung from a time-darkened tin ceiling
blinked twice, pupils widened,
then the child (sent by his mother for bread)
or the stevedore (out of milk and snoose)
or the lonely widow (needing some company)
could see it all right to the back,
to the flowered calico curtain
obscured her private life
from the rest of the West End.
Alive, the curtain looked
alive as the plants in the window
when the small freezer
yellow-gray, scratched and etched glass top
surged on with groans and wheezes
as it maintained the solidity
of nickel Popsicles, and thirty-cent pints of ice cream
vanilla, chocolate, and Neapolitan,
called Napoleon by old West Enders.
The freshest thing in the store
was the rack of Taystee Bread
refilled by the bread man once a week
who took the unclaimed orphan loaves
to the day-old store.
Warm, dark
wood floor creaking
freezer snuffling,
by day Ann’s was mellow.
But after school the place was jumpin’
when Lincoln Junior let out and the kids
(young greasers we admired Connie and Skeeter,
Elvis, Conway, and Jerry Lee)
rocked and rolled through the door,
flocks of freed blackbirds and sparrows
lighting at Ann’s glass penny candy case,
the biggest in the West End.
Ann sat behind the counter, on a rickety stool,
wearing a cotton housedress, one day plaid,
the next a gray floral that matched the curtain,
waving her scepter, a broom handle
and telling us to behave or get out!
Her favorite kids waited on themselves
sliding the glass doors back and forth
taking orders and handing out licorice and Chum Gum
while Ann collected the money, you paid on your honor
which worked fine if you weren’t fussy
as the candy wasn’t wrapped
and passed through unwashed hands.
On a winter day I got in the store last,
in the last row of the flock,
candy-craving crows and sparrows
shrieking for Jolly Ranchers and taffy
I waited at the window of summer green,
my backside against the radiator
the cactus brushing the back of my coat,
for my penny piece of pickle gum
that looked like the cactus.
Sticky and fuzzy on the tongue,
it tasted of sweat and pennies and wool mittens.
In high school we grew worldly,
crows and sparrows muted to doves and ravens
rolling eyes at the after-school invasion into Ann’s.
Callow, self-conscious sophisticates we agonized
over Diane liking Greg who liked Karen who liked Bob
and the new boy at the Wesley Church parsonage
just down the hill from Ann’s.
Girls whispered behind their hands
about his smile, his button-down collars,
his English-looking shoes
from Dayton’s in Minneapolis, we’d heard,
that shy minister’s son innocent of West End ways.
A lovely autumn evening in the West End it was
when he and Ann met; a quarter passed
from his palm to hers, the exchange
the purchase of a loaf of Taystee Bread.
Her mouth opened when he asked for a bag.
“What do you think that little thing on the end is for?”
she asked, which began his education
as a West End boy. I heard about it.
I had noticed him, of course,
and one day he noticed me.
And on a cindery West End summer night
walking like other boys and girls did
from Ann’s to the wilds of Lincoln Park,
down to Penney’s to look in the windows,
then to the library on Second Street
and back to Ann’s, we fell in love,
like other boys and girls did in the West End.
We shared a near-beer, tentative and shuffling,
quiet and close on the gritty sidewalk
that reflected the moon to a million bitty stars,
then looked up at the real stars against the sky
so dark and soft, watching them shine for us
as big and bright as they did
for the people in far and foreign East End,
countless stars free as the Taystee bread from Ann’s
was for people who really needed it, miraculous stars
unknown light years away reflecting back shining gold
in the window of
Ann’s Market SALADA TEA