And small. And much alike.
The avenues were numbered north-south,
and east-west streets were named.
Unnamed alleys between the numbered avenues.
My growing up had no outside measurements,
so whatever we lacked went unnoticed.
The Europe-descended neighbors
lived and died in their houses
Until, within two decades,
the white Broadview checkerboard square
shifted to black.
Recoloring the high school meant
twenty years of fights and brawls,
mostly after my time.
My class reunions were all white,
the black quarter of us
unwilling to return to minority
and staying away.
Ed Ahern resumed writing after forty odd years in foreign intelligence and international sales. He’s had over two hundred stories and poems published so far, and five books. Ed works the other side of writing at Bewildering Stories, where he sits on the review board and manages a posse of four review editors.
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