Angelica Melendez

Stepping Into Fresh Pond

I'll walk three steps back to youth today.
I'll pass by chocolate egg creams,
past recollections of pretend
summer supermarket trips
when we didn't have to steal the ground beef.
We wanted Williamsburg
before it was trendy.
When it was cheap rent and your favorite
Chino-Latino stood stubbornly as the corner store.
How I loved your face under branch shadows
and later beneath the Spanish moss.
You held my hand trembling
amidst tales of corruption,
confessions of erected lovers,
and sliding hands under tables made of glass.
I smell you in Georgia.
I catch a whiff of you on the L-train
where young Hispanic boys still smell of Fahrenheit.
You loved Ray Bradbury.
I lived your descriptions,
made up a million bodies,
molded them in wax,
displayed them in alignment in my mind.

Angelica Melendez hails from Brooklyn, New York and is the product of a "very Neuyorican heritage and transplanted upbringing."

Want to see what reviews look like? Click here
Like this poem? Send this link to a friend