The Depression Years

Abstract

leave behind its dust and pull on up to that storefront weather-worn with its tin porch roof held up by posts I might still carve initials on. In the barber shop that's Dad's he's caught the hair that's fallen on the shoulder; now it goes on tumbling to the floor and the black man in the corner comes forth to sweep it up. In the schoolhouse that pouting little girl quits picking at her shoe, stands up and then is grown and beautiful but bored to tears. I watch her meet her Rodolphe in the woods. Those who walk beneath the marquee in Iowa go right on in, have their popcorn in the dark. I can hear it while I taste the first-thrill kiss, slip my hand inside the bra again. We miss half the lines that Betty Grable speaks, then with different lovers (this was practice) found the families that war destroyed or that left today's so-called adults. I look down on Pittsburgh too, from a hill of slag, spot that famous billboard where the family's crammed into a car, before a mile of tortured slums in smog. I conclude that Rothstein failed to stop the action, still the dance. He keeps me gawking, moving back.