By Alice Owen Duggan

The mailbox has teeth in its mouth now, so you can’t steal
the mail—and the gas pump plays swaying ukulele tunes,
while you stand in the snow under the palms.

Wild teen turkeys hang out by the bank and even here,
in Contentmentville, a girl holds up her word, Hungry,
outside our grocery store.

I could mention a murder and let it stick in your throat and mine.
Or move swiftly on and describe my husband, gray and frail.
You asked about change. On a hot afternoon

as he carried a heavy box to our car, three people wanted to help.
In fact an amazement of help has come our way—Adam who hooked up
our amplifier, Bill who searched out the right fluorescent,

Mindy who’s unafraid of our chaos, boxes it up. So all is still sweetness
and light, is it not, it is not. Always there’s something to keep on the back burner
of rage. The pocket park with its grove of pine, its gentle welcome, is gone,

replaced by a dull hulking bank where yes, I cash my checks, this isn’t
the teller’s fault. I would never give up my anger, otherwise how
could I be myself? But we’re talking about the neighborhood.

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Alice Owen Duggan’s poems have appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Poetry East, WaterStone Review, and elsewhere. Her chapbook is A Brittle Thing, (Green Fuse Poetic Arts). She has poems in the anthologies: The Heart of All That Is; Resist Much Obey Little; and Rocked by the Waters.