Tom Lachman
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The Smiths

I mistook the smell for the sweat and breath and toes
of the Smiths, but it must have been the house itself,
rotting wood and termites, inherited cockroaches,
plumbing coughing on exhausted rugs, mold
creeping like mice, the very house draining
crookedly into muddy ruts. The house
across the street heaved with Smiths, but later
and less often that same smell -- a whiff
of ain’t -- would smack me in other houses.
Still, the six brothers weren’t much for baths.

Harry said got some shoes?
and I gave him the sneakers I was wearing
and wore my little brother’s shoes and he cried.
My shoes were too small for Harry
because he was the biggest strongest Smith
but he didn’t beat me up that day or call me a Jew.
Harry had a trick. Bobby and Simmy and Brocky
and Dudley and Lerty Smith and my brother and I
would go out to a scabby field on a clear day
and watch Harry throw a softball in rainbow arcs
and watch where it fell and go to fetch it.
But we could never find it and we’d run back
to Harry and he’d have it in his hand.
We did this over and over and finally I stayed back
to watch him cheat. But I couldn’t catch him.
The ball would just be in his huge hand
when his brothers ran back. Maybe they were in on it.
My brother woke each morning screaming Harry
had stolen his red ball till Mom handed it to him in bed.

They might think Sharon was my girlfriend. It was hot.
I couldn’t sleep upstairs. Sharon lay on the beach
lounge on our porch. She was the oldest, as soft
as Harry was hard, soft enough to be our babysitter
after my brother was asleep but I couldn’t sleep
in the heat and stars while she lay out on the porch.
She told me to lie down with her and relax
my head on her shoulder. My heels above her knees.
But I kept popping up to see if my parents’ lights
were coming down the street. They might think
Sharon was my girlfriend. There were no other lights.
Our tree hid its crab apples. Sharon laughed
and told me to lie still. But my father.
My back to her breast, in her arms. My mother.
Sharon didn’t smell like her house.

“Still a Jew?”
Our families had long ago moved in opposite directions
yet not so far. Anywhere anytime a snowball
might smash my glasses and I’d hear cackling
and see Smiths dart like rats past a drugstore corner.
Or sneaking up behind me at a game would be Simmy
to ask theological questions. If for me his voice cracked
open a rotting scent, maybe I reminded him of eviction.
Was I still a Jew? I wasn’t quick enough
to ask if he was still a Christian. On the field our yellow team
and their purple team kicked a ball in the dirt (the Jews
against the Christians.) Still a Jew? How could I answer that?
How could I ever answer it, but always the question
would be soaked in Smith. Alongside Sharon’s lilac
embrace, alongside Harry’s rainbow throw,
alongside my brother’s morning hysteria.

*          *          *

Girl With Accordion

The old songs in the dying tongues
are always about roses,
the proffered rose, the thorny rose,
the blooming rose, the withered rose,
rose, the red red rose.
They chant about rain
but they sing of tears.
Bent beneath blood red blankets
woven with black serpents
that hex her customers,
the mother must pretend
till the moon relieves the sun
that she doesn't see her daughter
on the sidewalk propped
by the yellow adobe wall.
The girl's skinny arms squeeze
every last breath
from the woozy accordion
as her little voice wails
of courtship and drunken regret --
she's an authority on desire
long before her first kiss.
The evening shadow tries to shut
the brown eyes too large
for the brown face
as the winged voice silvers
the jar beside her.
Up there they would say
the singer has a future. Down here
they know she has a past.

Tom Lachman is a poet living in Takoma Park, Md. His poems have appeared in Delaware Poetry Review, Poet magazine, and Dancing Shadow Review.