Inscape 04 FINAL - Pasadena City College

Winner of 2003 Creative Writing Contest
Best Poem
S TEVE S AUCEDO
1.
When We Had the Playground
to Ourselves
All low alleys look the same—
trash bubbles out of can, pavement is stained,
engine blocks are hollow, all metal is rust.
This was the channel we traveled on our way
to the empty playground on Mott, my friend & I.
We would glide by as children do, and voices,
sounds, & music would rise & fall in our ears.
The dogs looked like leopards; spots composed
of dirt;
they sniffed the insides of paper bags, and,
sometimes,
their heads would get stuck and we’d laugh—
but, poor dog, for all he knew the darkness in the
bag could’ve been the end of the world;
no wonder he bucked and whipped like a crazy horse.
And no matter how hard we’d fling a stone
the crows would always fly away just in the nick.
2.
Teeter-totters are an archaic playground ride—
replaced by orange plastic slides engineered so as
not to conduct heat, so as not to burn kids in
shorts.
The place on Mott had all the old-time, danger fun.
Scraped knees & shaved elbows & once I got a
bump on my head it looked like a smooth walnut.
The swings needed oil, so the piercing squeaking of
metal friction twined with the glee of our laughs
as we swung. We pretended we were the legs of
a robot.
The mellow sun slugged along on its arch,
marking time—
we mixed sandbox sand & water to great results:
mini-fragile remparts we cast from a bucket mold—
The sun was slowly pouncing on the skyscrapers to
the west, flooding pink on the skyline—
it was time to head home.
3.
After candy rings, sour rocks, & ice-cream
sandwiches,
We scuttled down 1st. Nighttime waits, wily,
on the other
side of the planet all day to attack; to
stifle good &
to percolate evil in hearts; night was coming soon;
I knew this because the lights in Isaac’s shoes
were bright now—Isaac was my friend.
We passed by a trash heap haphazardly.
We walked by a lime-hued house with a black
iron fence.
“That’s where my dad died,” Isaac said.
Immediately,
I thought, what a funny place to die: the sidewalk,
which was where he pointed. “He was shot,”
he muttered.
I asked who shot him & he said, “Some guy, I
don’t know.”
It wasn’t until we reached his house and said
goodbyes,
when left alone, on the streets, with night
shooing day,
crickets harking the bald men from their porches to
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