Urban Youth

 by Tracy K. Smith

You'd wake me for Saturday cartoons
When you were twelve and I was two.
Hong Kong Phooey, Fat Albert & the Cosby Kids.
In the '70s, everything shone bright as brass

When you were twelve and I was two,
It was always autumn, blue sky, flimsy clouds.
This was the '70s. Every bright day a brass
Trombone slept, leaning in your room.

Autumn-crisp air. Blue skies. Clouds
Of steam clotted the windows near the stove (and
Slept in the trombone kept in your room). You
Wrote a poem about the sea and never forgot it.

Steam clotted the window near the stove
Where Mom stood sometimes staring out.
I forget now what there was to see.
So much now gone was only then beginning.

Mom stood once looking out while you and 
Dad and Mike taught me to ride a two-wheeler.
So much was only then beginning. Should
I have been afraid? The hedges hummed with bees,

But it was you and Dad and Mike teaching me to ride,
Running a long beside me until you didn't have to hold on.
Who was afraid? The hedges thrummed with bees
That only sang. Every happy thing I've known,

You held, or ran alongside not having to hold.

Sai Tells a Ghost Story

 

by Soham Patel (while practicing some version of surya namaskar [aka sun salutations]) One morning in late 2010 I looked out my Pittsburgh apartment window where I always saw a parking lot, the Spinning Plates Artist Lofts, and a euonymus-lined part of the avenue, there at the beginning of Friendship. I knew all the families living on the block because of the rescue dog I live with—we would walk around, routinely meet the people. That early morning and only that morning, I saw out the window a figure of what seemed to be a like four- or five-year-old brown girl riding a bicycle up Friendship Avenue then fade away. How else I know I saw a ghost is the child seemed so composed, happy, and it was way too early in the morning for someone so young to be out riding alone. from Poem-a-Day, October 30, 2024