Listen :: Minor Threat :: Salad Days
Salad Days
Too young to work, too bored
to sit in our parents’ houses.
Mandy and I get there early.
The smell of homemade potato pancakes,
halluski, pierogies, funnel cakes saturate the air
June through August.
This year
8ozJoe is playing
the Holy Name bazaar.
We do laps around the lot,
meander around instant bingo
booths and raffles
for crocheted toilet paper covers.
Kids in baggy jeans and mohawks,
newsboy hats, and checkered suspenders jumble
among old men in high-water pants dancing
with old women in support hose
rolled down at the knee.
We claim
a patch of grass
to the side of
the rows of folding chairs
in front of the band shell : wait
for the Polka Kings to finish their set.
Duck, duck, duck, Chris pats
everyone’s head. Duck, duck,
goose! Mandy leaps
up
chases him
around.
He hurdles over three of us
to the empty space –
Duck, duck, Mandy begins.
I don’t hear
goose! as she bops
me on the head.
I catch
the back of her T-shirt,
she dives for the gap,
we both fall.
The group rules her safe,
I’m it.
Duck, duck, duc…
Two children trip toward us,
battling with foam swords.
We jump up, back away, afraid
we will become casualties.
back roads & city streets 