In my little town there were
moms at home doing laundry,
schools we could walk to,
one car in every driveway, sometimes two.
Our neighborhoods teemed with children —
kick ball or wiffle ball in the middle of the street.
There was a bowling alley, ice cream parlor
and golf driving range,
In my little town there were teachers
who required us to memorize poems,
write haikus, read Icarus, Hiroshima,
Shakespeare and the Bible.
And in my little town, a football coach taught
health class. A young teacher who spoke
openly on the VietNam war, civil rights
and the slaughter of indigenous people
was disappeared, replaced
by an elderly retired teacher who bored us
with dates and white washed facts,
screamed at us to pay attention.
Our only lake, once a summer retreat,
was declared a Superfund waste site.
There was rampant drug and alcohol abuse,
breast cancer, brain tumors, overdoses and suicides.
In my little town, mostly white and Christian,
we sang China Town is Burning down,
during recess, to the tune of ring-around-the-rosy
at the one Chinese American boy
in our third grade class, who stood
off to the side, while we held hands
and skipped round and round.
Laurie Rosen is a lifelong New Englander. Her poetry has appeared in The Muddy River Poetry Review, Peregrine, Oddball Magazine, Gyroscope Review, The New Verse News, The Inquisitive Eater: a journal of The New School, One Art, and elsewhere.