318 Sangamon Street

Dave McNamara

It was supposed to be a starter home

Like how the long brown coffee table

Made of plastic and pressboard

Was donated by our deceased grandmother

Until we could afford another.

One of its cabinet doors hung broken,

Propped up against the peeling wood veneer.

When I was young I’d press my fingers

Into the scalloped edges of the table.

The grooves looked like tiger claws or talon marks,

Its plastic faded chocolate brown to khaki from

Rubbing my fingertips into them.

My brother and I played Cowboys and Indians on its top

With colored plastic figures and a couple of nickels

Used as bombs to slide through enemy lines.

Or we played paper football, flicking the triangle

Through hands made into goalposts

With our elbows braced upright

On the sagging tabletop.

We made do with the coffee table for years

Along with the spot where the cats soaked the rug

And carpet pad with urine,

Softening the linoleum tile underneath,

Rotting the wooden strip it was tacked on.

Just like we made do with broken beds

Pocked with piss, sweat and pubescent stains--

The earnest history of childhood longings

Found in the topography of discolorations--

Bent curtain rods with orange drapes

That the cats caught their claws in,

Hissing at something outside in the dark,

Bringing down both with a bang,

Exposing the naked porch light

Clotted with dead mosquitoes.

My brother would not wake, however,

And I was already awake, lying on my back,

Counting backwards and trying not to think.

We tolerated the yard of mud in the front,

And a tree sprouting in the foundation,

Shedding its leaves and winged seeds on the roof,

Growing ancient prairie plants in the gutters.

We took turns tolerating and ignoring,

Making do with whatever happened to work.

We tackled the ones we could,

Solving the fixable to make us feel better.

And we felt better, bonded by what was unique,

Like a weed growing in the cracks,

Beautiful even though damned by its name

Surrounded by the coarse and broken company

Of sidewalk.

We ignored

the chipped concrete of the back porch

Stained burgundy with mulberries,

Alive with teeming flies and June bugs,

The larvae moving underneath

The garbage can lid that smelled like murder

Or the back porch that looked like murder,

Or another kind of death you have to be careful

Not to talk about.