abecedarian for the immigrant children singing in front of unit 372
august comes in unshuttered brightness. in the back of our rented chevrolet the tomato plants flower and die in the sun’s hot envy. our new apartment—a fickle thing, iron banisters and trembling grates and the neighbor’s cat howling through the wall—crumbles by the hour. on the bench across the street we eat ice cream treacherously slow. dog walkers jut past and jeer at us; to them we do not know the difference between a lick of ice cream and a lick of english, made in china stamped on our sweaty foreheads, nameless and deaf and over the moon with american awe. let us pray we never learn. for there is no quietness of early afternoon and no resting languor of summer as we rise and begin to sing voiceless, unhearing, to the teetering pines above us, to the unwavering cornflower field that is the sky, violent with joy. exhale and laugh and yield to the zealous rhythm of life, children, sweetly, feverishly sing.
