CAROLE NELSON PHILLIPS
We Left, You Returned

beyond these ochre
walls, roses and
safety of years
another house:

fat smells from
communal kitchen
hung in our room,
my mattress thin
on the floor beside
your cot beneath
a window looking
out to nothing, chains
on a door to less.

night cries at morning
became hair in blood
on an oven, ignored
while milk heated.

we left, now you
return, blood in your
hair, and me drowning
in the scent of roses

NANCY HAIDUCK
Summer

This ledge of the Bronx between 
the last bus on Tremont Ave and 
the East River
gets crazy in June
when the sun stretches at nine and goes down
to a watchman's gig in the city.
Yes Yes
Summer is here.
His young wife and sun-burnt daughter have quit
the cramped house in the flicker of tv light
to enjoy the warm night air, honeysuckle,
the blink of fireflies and a breeze
cutting a swath to places beyond Tremont Ave,
even beyond the city, 
as low river tides churn multitudes 
of glass and sand
and leave something to be desired.
They sit on the steps expecting
the watchman's familiar gait,
his starched white shirt gleaming like the moon.
Soon he will answer their kisses,
"Say, do you want to go for a midnight cruise
on the Staten Island Ferry?"
"Yes!" "Yes!"
Summer is here.
But for now, an old woman puts down her bags
in front of him.  She wants a rest, and so he
opens a folding chair by the revolving door
in the street lamp's nimbus,
"I don't care if I get in trouble."
She wraps her swollen hands around 
a cardboard cup of tea and bides her time.
Yes, yes,
Summer is here.