Read Poem: Parlors, by John Glass

My neighbor was a member
of a gang, the Latin Kings.
My neighbor sits to my right,
but had lived downstairs.

My neighbor reminds me
of Junior, real country folk,
who attended my great-uncle’s wake
back in Bama, some twenty years.

He wore overalls, Big Country,
to raised eyebrows, even there,
a reunion, though teary
as with this shabby funeral home

that I now attend
a wake for a mutual friend
my neighbor and I, catching up
a good guy, someone said.

But Victor wore a bandana,
and liked to say yo.
It was known that he’d killed someone,
back in Quitó.
He stayed but a few minutes
but his bandana remains with me
just as Junior’s denim
too remains with me.

I crunch-step through frost to the train
in Spanish-soaked Queens,
thinking of tonight’s dusty parlor
and that ancient Southern evening.

I shiver, thinking Victor
is okay, going to…