Babo Kamel

She shows them her part of town

where industry once choked the sky and laundry waved to attract
a bit of sun. Generations spent entire lives here, as if the world began

at Hickson and ended somewhere north of Our Lady of Seven Sorrows.
She remembers playing stickball street-side until the lamps came on.

Then stoop sitting summer nights, the air so thick it felt like she could drown
breathing. How the sound of a distant siren sounded lonely as if it mourned

the loss of someone she didn’t know. Later, the city would lull her
to sleep with the sweep of car lights across her room, the murmurs

of neighbors through walls like secrets of foreign spies
and the creak of her mother’s footsteps on the wooden floor

dependable as Ed Sullivan on Sundays. Everyone smoked then.  Even
the woman next door, who never would say where she came from

but baked her rugelach and sang in languages she could not understand.
Now, crossing a vacant lot, she sees a foodie bar promising grit and authenticity.

The old corner store renamed The Corner Store, sells scarves on shelves
once stocked with soda pop, penny candy and pickles so sour

they made her eyes squint as if trying to imagine herself into a future
like today, her children wandering through her story, the sky a cornflower blue.

________________________________________________________________________________________

Originally from Montreal, Babo Kamel’s work is published in reviews such as Whale Road Review, Greensboro Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, CV2, Poet Lore and Best Canadian Poetry 2020. She is a Best of the Net nominee and a six-time Pushcart nominee. Her chapbook, After, is published with Finishing Line Press. Find her at: babokamel.com