Dennis Cummings

  That summer
someone stole my sister’s horned toad
which lived with its eggs in a mayonnaise jar.

  That summer
a preacher shouted salvation
every night for a week from a tent
pitched outside a supermarket.

  That summer
the last case of polio in our neighborhood
came to a four year old boy.

  That summer
a man walked every afternoon
in front of the used car lot
and held a sign with a giant lemon on it.

  That summer
I got a ride with Stu Rivers
and his pharmacist father to our baseball games
in a maroon convertible Riviera.

  That summer
we put Mercurochrome on our scraped knees
and wore St. Christopher medals.

  That summer
I sat in the dugout with Happy Thompson
while he pounded the cinder-block wall
with a river stone. It’s the only way out, he said.