Remember?

[Author's Note: This poem should smell of leather, cigarettes, and Puerto Rican style rice and beans.]

Don't you?

Those

icicles hanging precarious winter on the
17^th floor terrace, and you must remember
The Bronx.

Right?

how
you were so proud you were the only borough with
the The. 

You used to winter
whatever would fall
like toy car springs would
kill things
like

mosquito larva

wriggling tiny waves

in        stagnant        summer.

You threw things over constantly
like dinosaurs you gave names,
pogs,
you threw
those
bloody-nose tissues out of
the window, you
had to! Or
Mommy'd see
you
were
fighting. Or



Wait!
wait...

Yellow dimpled hard-rubber batting-cage balls... Right?

.

.

.

Yo,

Remember we buried that dead bird and cried?

Oh, and

They could never convince you to go on rides, remember?

They'd be trying for weeks before you went, waving
hands at chu and gettin' mad pumped, to pump
you up
            but,

nothing. 

.                  
.     
.
Not
even

the log flume.

.



Hey



Remember

Waiting            for             a                tan                            Nissan?

   And
Papi's
shirt

down
to
your knees
 
 
       how it smelt like boardwalk floorboards

Oh.

Hot-asphalt recess smell! 

.

Definitely,
you remember
your first set of house keys,
                                                              cell phone,
Oh,

and always!
you would always end up adding "-ahh" to 

the end of every phrase when you were
whining-ahhh.
                          Right? and 

                                            Oh Yeah and

                                                    and the hallway,
                                                                        
On the 5th floor, where your aunt lived, just
                                                           constantly

constantly

smelled
just like your aunt.

JV

For Marc and Joey M.