Something Else

[Philatone]

Adrian came.
-turn on the news
he says.

a grocery store burns in our living room.
firefighters pour onto the corner
of Locust and Twenty
years ago.

missing jump-ropes,
the Rottweilers that used to give chase,
the neighbors who moved after coming home
to an emptied house one night,

they step over
brown bottles covering sewer grates
to reach the hydrant.

he says- I hit a baseball
right through that window.

a woman is pointing to the left from her doorway

and there -I say-
your brother lost his tooth on the curb.

the store reappears as the eye
follows vines of smoke
climbing the sky.

-well, I guess we have
something else to forget now

I say nothing,
fallen into a flash of a counter
with a register, a bag of penny candy
dropped into my hand.

seeing a suit behind a desk,
the television falls asleep again,
a curtain pulled like a plug.

somehow, we both know
this is how it starts,
the carving of our block into
just another street in a forest,
until, slowly,
we are left with
a name without a face

and I have to admit we have
something else to forget now.