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.