Dolly Parton 1969

A thought, a discord. We saved up for
Fresh eggs with rice and beans we
bought in bulk at the 32nd Street Market
And the way we counted the bus tokens
in the days when you deposited them
in a glass lantern as you boarded the
blue city bus to Longfellow that made
clacking noises as the metal tokens
that looked like candy were scooped
into the bottom of the machine as you
boarded the bus. We watched the tokens
spin like an arcade as we rode to TG & Y,
asking for paper transfers for the way back
to the discord, to the jubilation of when
we arrived on Magnolia to stand at Wyngard Center
for government cheese and blocks of
white margarine, jubilation and conformity
dipping into our lives like pulled candy,
like depth, like the fresh demeanor we
put on like socks to wear out, like
an event to be looked forward to, the time
we wished for when we would be doing
the getting out dance, of what is called
not to be like us , to get out past the clouds,
above the last demarcation line of the city
where we were born, where we could
hold the grace of being anywhere else,
in our hands, where we could look past
the half-block distance of getting away
from frailty and the suspension of our
disbelief towards a new city like Albany
or New York, where there are no evictions
taped to the wall, no clothes piled up
on the porch, where there is the still kind
of graceful permanence that we can count
on, with five fingers, repeating to ourselves
the mantra of, “touch wood to forehead.”

Millicent Borges Accardi, a Portuguese-American writer has four poetry collections  including Only More So (Salmon) and, most recently,  Quarantine Highway  (FlowerSong) Among her awards are fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, California Arts Council, CantoMundo, Fulbright, Foundation for Contemporary Arts NYC (Covid grant), Fundação  Luso-Americana, Barbara Deming Foundation.