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Defaulted Memory
by Gary Blankenship
a boy of five ~~~ bare-foot
[red-hair
short
back-and-sides
ruffled]
sits on a
s*a*n*d -stone step
- SK Iyer
except he was eight
a towhead
and the steps were wood
He was barefoot
but was also shirtless
It was summer
and he wore shoes and shirts
only on Sunday
when company came
or they were going to town
to shop for school clothes
It was the last summer of his life -
his mother was married
to a man he had never met
and they arrived today
to take him to their new house
Something must have happened that day -
if nothing more than words between them
a car ride
his box of clothes and toys
placed in his new room
Even now at the distance of 55 years
he can't remember what
________________________________________
'In another village miles away'
by Jonathan Shaw
My sisters and I caught the bus
to school, waiting at the mango tree
at the bottom of our red drive, in neat,
convent uniforms, tunics and pinafores,
shorts and sandals, though in the rainy
seasons sometimes barefoot but
for thick red caked volcanic mud.
We feasted in season on yellow windfall
or the cherry tomatoes, self-sown
that twisted along our father's barbed wire.
('Careful,' our mother said, too late,
'they could be poison.')
The bus would pick us up
under a hard blue sky or in bucketing rain
to carry us three miles to town
but first this needle-eye of time
through which we passed to riches
red mud on our soles
sticky gold about our lips
and a sharp pop on our
palates.
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