My Home

 ( Dedicated to Felicia "Negri" Santana)

By Alberto O. Cappas

I have a nice home at the apartment

I have two small girls that understand innocence without

definitions

I have a wife that doesn't understand my politics

I have a sister-in-law that volunteers to put her two cents

behind my back

I have friends that drop in on the wrong time

And bills that visit my mailbox unexpectedly

I have a father-in-law that talks to me about buying a house

And getting involved in business while we talked about

liberation

I have a clock that fights with me every morning

And a mouse that hides from me all the time

He doesn't believe me when I try to tell him that I used to

live in a ghetto

I have copies of Ramparts

They had rejected my submissions many times

Perhaps I write bad poems

I do have a bad typewriter

My two small girls use it when they play house

My wife doesn't care

They use my middle-class Bar as their playhouse

During the night after midnight

I read or write

In the morning the clock wakes me

I fight against her screams for a few minutes

But she always defeats me

My wife throws away my work after my two

Small girls edited them

My sister-in-law doesn't say anything

She waits until I leave.

*   *   *   *   *