Don't Blame Me, I'm Just Here to Fix the Garbage Disposal: Part Three
New Tenants
Arabian girl
explosive hair
olive skin
pubescent
so thin
bare toes curling on the floor.
Father wants
a deadbolt lock
on her bedroom door.
Quietly she glares
eyes of dark jade.
He keeps both keys.
I do as paid.
Love Baby and Teen Boy
Last night a man kicked open her front door.
"Nothing like this has ever happened before,"
Manager Larry says with pursed lips.
The lady is cradling an ebony
infant in her arms.
"This one's my love baby
and he's all mine," she tells me.
"Love," she winks, "with a restraining order."
As I rebuild the splintered frame
a teen boy scowls in silence from across the room,
leg twitching, soul aflame.
Note:
Among my contracting jobs, for many years I've served as the
on-call handyman for a group of townhouse-style apartments — or rental
units — or whatever one should call an enclosed square of two-story
dwellings in a subdivision of Sunnyvale, California. It's steady
money. As a minor league writer, I need that.
I tried to summarize
the experience in prose, but verse seems to work best. Most of the
events took place in the 1980s though a few are more recent. This is
Part Three of a series.
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