Photo by Tom Grünbauer on Unsplash
- with thanks to Joni Mitchell
Weaving through the streets of Vailsburg - Sunset, Alexander,
Sandford, Stuyvesant, Richelieu -
a stack of eight-tracks banging across the backseat
of the orange two-door Datsun,
singing at the top of our lungs, red in the face,
windows down in early summer.
You, all court and spark, muse of being free in Paris,
with your man, performing at rich people's parties,
me, a twisted trouble child, raised on robbery (mostly
Snickers bars), kissing girls but not you.
We talked about anything and everything,
your mouth helped me
feel good with the silly and serious
so no need to put my lips on yours.
Still to this day when you visit we slide back
to when every day was a summer night,
park the car on the hill at the top of South Orange Ave.
where Grunings faced the New York skyline.
Another man fails to keep up with you,
gets clingy,
doesn't want you to sing all the time,
same situation.
Wandering around Maplewood Village,
past the ice cream shop
where over forty years ago we wore
pink uniforms and developed scooping forearms,
you ask me if
I will ever settle down.
Just like this train speeding past,
faces barely distinguishable,
a lightness in my head, heart beating fast,
an adrenaline rush,
there will be a slowing and stopping, a getting on
and getting off, some final station.
As always, when I get dreamy and stop speaking,
giving me some space, but not too much,
your inner parent and accountant emerges,
the practical Pisces chastising the wayward Gemini:
"Well, you know, it all comes down to you."
Kathy Kremins (she/her) is a Newark, NJ native of immigrant parents and a retired public school teacher and coach. Her poetry chapbook, Undressing the World, was published by Finishing Line Press (2022). Kathy’s recent work appears in Digging Through the Fat, Platform Review, Soup Can Magazine, The Night Heron Barks, Paterson Literary Review, Stay Salty; Life in the Garden State Anthology, The Stillwater Review, Divine Feminist: An Anthology of Poetry & Art By Womxn and Non-Binary Folx and other publications.