Paramus

a lime-green ranch style home

an intractable lawn

my bedroom with the bright yellow walls
and a back door that I always insisted
lead to Oz, but both the door and the fantasy
never existed

one purple Flintstone vitamin,
daily, during the “Good Times” re-run

a hole in the corner of the backyard
that ended in Australia,
trying to bribe the kangaroos
with zwieback toast

the Bergen Mall in
late 70s Technicolor splendor,
retail rapture for
the middle-class spender:
Mego heroes from J.J. Newberry,
long underwear from Ohrbach’s,
and a handful of quarters
for the shopping bags at Stern’s
and the collection plate
at the underground chapel

the boy with the Batman flip-flops,
his brother who held no gods above
Ace Frehley, their father who
was always preparing his Firebird
for the next road rally, their mother
obsessed with tag sales, a family
of ostrich farmers who never failed
to invite us to Shabbos or
St. Patrick’s Day dinner

crying in nursery school
crying in nursery school
crying in nursery school
except on Picture Day

the llama at Van Saun County Park
that ate my Death Star Droid

the expanse of unstoppable nature
in the babysitter’s backyard,
the lessons in badminton that always
ended with the admonition:
“the shuttlecock is not a hand grenade”,
no-crust sandwich lunches with
Frankenstein Jr. and the Impossibles,
my contented grin another expanse
of unstoppable nature

my father’s puzzlement as to how
I could swallow a mislaid bristle block,
a lift of the sofa cushion akin to the
opening of the ark of the covenant,
my mother’s astonishment as to how
he could believe I could swallow it,
the last time I heard my father
apologize

the arrival of the “ugly little thing”
and my threat to throw him into
a smokestack in downtown Hackensack
if he ever cried too loudly

the migration
from lime green
to a new house
in pine green
in a new town
with a new lawn
and a mower that
salivated for dandelion

and the running joke that
Paramus never happened,
the shades are down and
you need your rest and
don’t disturb Mommy and Daddy
during “Knots Landing”

my face on the windowsill
my mind with the llama
and my conscious wonder if
Space Ghost knows where I am