Summer 1993 (For Becky)

06Mar09

Tony Spatola’s cold hard cash
was sno-cone red,
wadded fives and wadded ones
drizzled medicinal grape.

Earning it meant 10 hour days
at the igloo, shaving ice and counting cups,
tallying styrofoam like there was an
accounting department, loss prevention, something to even lose
that wasn’t long since gone.

How we basked in fringe benefits like cavities,
juvenile onset diabetes,
the ability to mound ice flawlessly
with a gasoline funnel.

Lessons learned:
You have to start somewhere. Everything ferments.
I get scared when I’m alone.

Tony stopped by once and yelled
about everything, alarmingly angry
for a purveyor of children’s rainbow dreams,
frozen water.

Maybe Becky tasted
tamarindo, chamoyada,
maybe she knows why latinos turned up in droves
at 5 minutes to close?

Peddling home past dusk,
mustachioed in primary colors and
stuck to myself, pruned
I would hum a Pumpkins tune
and play like I wasn’t fifteen,
wasn’t riding a ten-speed,
wouldn’t have given it up
in a heartbeat for a job at the mall
selling shoes.

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