Life in a Northern Town (1965)

Everyone was white
and uncles and aunts
came to visit every third
Sunday; husbands drove
green sedans and wives
wore blue dresses and cold beer
sat in ice next to the spare tire

There was dripping hamburger
grease and bratwurst & kraut,
cheesecloth & yogurt in tin cups

Storytellers were everywhere
and each story included
cute children: how they fell
down and skinned their knees

Churches were all six blocks
apart and in-between was a butcher
shop, a grocery store with two
owners and four aisles, the only
divorced mother and her four
children, all under the age of ten

At one edge of town was the cemetery,
filled with overweight white Americans;
at the other edge, a red bricked roundhouse
stood ready to transport all the black train
​engines in the opposite direction.
 
Tim J Brennan writes from southeast MN. He is a former Talking Stick poetry winner. He thinks poetry is cool but he really likes writing theatre. His short plays have appeared in NYC, Chicago, and San Diego.