Observing Holidays

FOURTH OF JULY
Dorianne Laux

The neighborhood cringes behind windows
washed in magnesium light, streamers fizzling
above the shingled rooftops of the apartments 
across the street where teenaged boys
with mannish arms throw cherry bombs,
bottle rockets, wings and spinners, snappers,
chasers, fiery cryolite wheels onto the avenue.
Paint flakes off the flammable houses
and onto brave square plots of white grass.
Rain-deprived vines sucker the shutters.
Backyard dogs tear at the dirt, cats
run flat out, their tails straight up.
What's liberty to the checkout girl
selling smokes and nuts, greenbacks
turning her fingers to grease? The boys
insist on pursuing happiness, their birthright
a box of matches, crackers on strings,
sparklers, fountains, missiles, repeating shells,
Roman candles, Brazilian barrages.
We peek through blind slats to where they stand
around a manhole cover, the gold foam
of Corona bottles breaking at their feet,
young up-turned faces lit by large caliber
multi-shot aerials. We suffer each concussion,
the sulfur rush that smells like fear, each dizzy,
orgiastic display that says we love this country,
democracy, the right to a speedy trial. We're afraid
to complain, to cross the spent red casings
melted on asphalt in the morning's stunned
aftermath, to knock hard on any door, and find them
draped like dead men over the couches, the floor,
hands clasped behind their hears prison style,
shoulders tattooed, dreaming the dreams of free men
in summer, shirts off, holes in their jeans.

from Dorianne Laux's The Book Of Men
recommended by Michael Hazel Mlekoday

LABOR DAY
Adam Stone

The  hurricaned boats that garlaned the trees that
summer finally went back home to their
harbors Helen's second husband too
returned to some place where he made more sense

Seagulls at the wake had more
cries than the mourners
less tears

Heather sifting Becky's
memories for some movie we'd all watched
It's coming from inside the house Remember?

When a stranger calls i tell her The teenager who 
inflicted the movie on me when i was four or
five Some one handed age when i decided to 
never answer the phone again

We mason jarred the best looking
shells One mermaid purse per
display The cat who would go
missing the next week
knocked becky's over and heather
laughed And everything
smelled like the ocean for one more
week before everyone else moved back
home to their cities and dry suburbs