33: Photograph: Circa 1960
33: Photograph: Circa 1960
Photograph: Circa 1960
by Angela Jackson
How wide the sidewalks were!
You stood in the middle of ours.
Definite and debonair.
Mama with a big black
Patent leather handbag.
Strap
Draped over her arm.
Chic. Loose coat holding no baby inside.
Madaddy suited, slanted wide brim hat.
At attention
As if he were seeing Paris
After the war.
All smiles.
Behind them the tall trees
Made shade. And fences
Held back the houses
And kept them off the sidewalk
And out of the street
Steel-veined with streetcar lines
Before they were erased like markings
From a game of hopscotch.
Were there shadows rolling in under the trees?
I see them now.
“Photograph: Circa 1960", from IT SEEMS LIKE A MIGHTY LONG TIME by Angela Jackson. Copyright © 2015 by Angela Jackson. Used by permission of Northwestern University Press.
