Neal Street
by Harold Van Lonkhuyzen
Strange innovations like Venetian blinds,
A wall of mirrors that were closet doors,
Sleek Danish cookpots I’d not seen before,
That unfamiliar smell: all call to mind
Your first apartment, Father, as bachelor
Again. Susan, your pretty lady friend,
Always just leaving, smirking, seemed to commend
This as “progress.” Weren’t you in search of “something more”?
The question, I suppose, was if our roles
As parent and child were now outmoded too?
I vomited each time I visited, it’s true —
Made sick by my mother’s rage, its bilious toll
Wrung from her Garrison Colonial
Just miles away — and longed for the historical.