Someone Else's Neighborhood

I never thought
I’d see something like that

In someone else’s neighborhood

Not like in ours

Not like in mine

I thought the streetlights

Would be higher

And the cement a cooler gray

I suspected I’d see

Lights behind dark red curtains

And lawns trimmed like eyebrows

And babies

And dogs

I never thought I’d see

A child standing

In the middle of the street

Not sure which side

She belongs on

There was a three-story building

The color of gold

But it cracked at the sides

And the windows are closed

The bars bar the wondering

You’re likely to do

About who could live there

And what they’re like

And what they do

And you say--

‘For a living’

But what living?

We don’t have living

Where I’m from

But I thought that was just us

Not someone else

And not

Another

Neighborhood

I never thought

A kitchen table

Could be more popular

Than a dance hall

I never thought

The ticket would get punched

Before I did

Sending me thousands

But only letting me

Keep a ten

I never thought my mind

Could be mine

Or that ideas

Could come out of me

And not be a hand-me down

Like everything else

Like everything else

Two cracks in a sidewalk

And I’d be slammed

With holes in my sneakers

With hard lefts

With two rights

With a miracle anticipated

But never executed

Nothing grows

Where I’m from

Not even roses

From concrete

We don’t even get

The poetry

Of other people’s

Misery

But I thought

At least

We’d be free

From thinking

That we

Were not

Unique

That was what I thought
Until I found myself

In someone else’s neighborhood

One house disappears

Then a man

Then a woman

Then another woman

Then a family

And have they moved?

Nobody moves

Nobody goes anywhere

But they’re not here

Not anymore

I walk down streets

Named after trees

And I feel like somebody’s

Following me

But where I’m going

Has never been anywhere

That someone else

Would want to be

Ring a doorbell

Introduce myself

And ask where I am

And how I got here

And did I ever live here

Because this looks just like--

It looks just like

It’s mine

When all around ‘mine’

Is a line

That separates

And doesn’t

Because it disappears

Because it disappears

Because it was here

And like everything else

It disappears