Apatow’s Drug Store
In September 1930 — over sixty years ago —
When my father couldn’t find a job for himself,
He was able to get me a job in Apatow’s Drug Store.
I had to go in after school, sweep the floor and the sidewalk,
And let Mr. Apatow go next door to his wife
For a quick cup of coffee and a snooze.
I also had to keep watch on Apatow’s basement library.

The library consisted of a collection
Of crates and cartons filled with books,
Spread all over the basement floor.
All the books had hard covers, some made of leather,
Some fairly new, most old and worn.
Apatow operated a lending library:
Two cents a day for each book borrowed.
But there were many losses. Borrowers would forget
To bring back The Bridge of San Luis Rey
Or the novels of Blasco Ibáñez.
Myself, just a boy, I stole
Spoon River Anthology and Winesburg, Ohio.

Those were easy books to read.
The words were short, although the meanings weren’t.
What was troubling all those people?
I couldn’t ask anyone, having stolen the books,
So I kept reading them over and over.
Saturated, I asked my mother for five cents
To buy a new used book,
But she didn’t have the money.
She said, Why don’t you write some stories or poems?
Writing is just as good as reading.

But what could I write about?
What did I know?
I tried: Erwin Rozansky lived in Apartment 6B.
His mother told him, Don’t use the elevator,
It’s not safe.
She really hoped he’d lose some weight,
But all that clunking up and down six flights
Not only made the neighbors angry,
It made him very hungry.

My mother thought that was a great story,
So she showed it to Mr. Apatow,
Asking, Doesn’t it remind you of de Maupassant?
He smiled: More like Anderson or Masters, I’d say.

By July, Mr. Apatow had to close the store.
His library had gradually disappeared, book by book.
No one paid the bills for books or pharmaceuticals.
I told Erwin that the store was padlocked,
So we went next door to his apartment
And we peeked in through the space
Between the window shade and the window frame.

Mr. Apatow and his wife lay side by side
On the big unmade bed,
Cigarettes smoldering in the saucer
That rested between his hand and hers.
Their large china blue eyes
Stared wide open at the corrugated tin ceiling.
Yellow-blond hair, both of them, tousled and damp,
They lay side by side, naked, in the July heat.
Only the cigarette smoke curling out of the saucer
Broke the absolute stillness.
We crept away, guilty, ashamed.

My father sits alone on a milk crate
Outside the Springfield Dairy.
I join him and his long silence.
A passerby sneers, Get a job, you bum.
My father checks the alarm on my face with a laugh,
That’s Chernoff, he says. What a clown!
Talking
In the hot afternoon sun,
The women sit on the porch,
Legs raised, ankles draped
Over the porch rail.

While they watch the grandchildren
Playing in the garden pool,
They talk about their mothers,
Still arguing with their dead mothers,
Trying to explain,
Trying to love,
And to be loved.

Why do the women argue still,
Only with their mothers,
Not with their fathers?
We hated them, says Margaret,
Those invisible men.
All we saw of them
Were the bandages wrapped
Around their wounds.

The women shift in their seats.
They lower their legs from the top rail,
Tugging their skirts down over their knees.
Haitian Poets
We live like other Haitians, unwanted.
We cling to rough, torturing surf.
Trying to reach America,
Where we can survive
Among the criminals.

We are Haitian poets, everywhere,
In Somalia, Bosnia, Rwanda,
In Cuba, New York, Brazil,
In Armenia,
Argentina.

We dive into the surf.
The sharks will meet us,
Bringing peace.

In Uganda, Germany,
Siberia,
No place is left out
Or left in:
Not in Australia, or France, or Libya,
Arabia, Iraq, Iran,
With God or without God.

So many languages,
Yet none can describe what happened,
Is happening, will happen,
Not Shoah or Holocaust

Or Ethnic Cleansing.
Something else is needed.
The USSR has disappeared.
Yugoslavia is no longer a fraternity.
India is breaking on the rack.
Japan and Korea cannot answer 
When we call.

The world is overcrowded,
Yet we are so lonely.
It is too tiring,
We dive into the rough, torturing surf,
Like the Haitian poets.
We cannot go back,
We cannot go forward.

The surf wipes out our poems.
The words swim away, go under.
The surf roars,
Echoing the craggy land.
Sixty-Seventh Birthday
I woke up today, said Rita,
Thinking I want to talk to Mama.
I don’t know why, nothing special,
Nothing special to talk about.
I just felt like calling her on the phone
And telling her I’m really okay now.

I don’t even miss her, never did.
I just would like to call her up again.

These poems are excerpted from Floyd Albert’s Even Commas. © 1995 by Floyd Albert. They appear here by permission of Mellen Press, P.O. Box 450, Lewiston, NY 14092.

— Ed.