Fast and Furious in Yonkers
By Justin Karcher
Halfway through the first act
I start thinking about Vin Diesel
because in the movie Furious 7
Dom Toretto declares
“I don’t have friends, I have family”
Lost in Yonkers has a similar message
now I keep imagining
a fantasy world
where Neil Simon
writes movies for Vin Diesel
and they’re all about
the importance of family
how you’re constantly
trying to figure out your family
the secrets
that turn hearts into car wrecks
how gasoline leaks
from talks at dinner time
how there’s always a relative
tossing a lit cigarette
into all that flammable tenderness
how everything tends
to go up in flames
when you try to love
what you’re born into
how you never really understand
the people you call family
until you’re forced to
a lonely aunt desperate for affection
who builds you ice cream castles
where you are king or queen
ruling over a land of sweet tooths
where kids never go to bed
because they’re scared to death
of orphanages for imperfect brains
like your lonely aunt
who was touched
when she was a kid
now she’s a scarecrow
your grandma keeps
in the closet when the dreaming
gets too big, when the silver screen
is all that your aunt sees
always wondering
what it’s like to be a star
what it’s like to grant wishes
but your family’s sky is too dark
for that kind of shine
too many birds
flying around the living room
blotting out satellite signals
you can never hear the right words
some have tried to listen
like your gangster uncle
who’s always dragging around
a treasure chest of stolen goods
gold pretzels or moldy European cash
from counties that don’t exist anymore
songs
that people would sing at weddings
the kind of love
that can’t function in the new world
you don’t know enough
to miss it
your grandma does
she instilled it in your father
who’s scrapping metal
somewhere far away
trying to save enough money
so he can buy indestructible fins
and swim away from that loan shark
your mother’s dead
a cubicle in the ground
and a work day that never ends
your uncle’s always hiding
from men who wanna kill him
the world always has a gun
aimed at your front door
now your aunt wants to run off
with an usher who can’t read
your other aunt is hushed by anxiety
until she can barely breathe
she sleeps with her head inside
the pillowcase, not quite death
but still a different kind of grave
how tragic
when bedrooms turn into cemeteries
your grandma handles these mysteries
with an iron fist, hardly been kissed
since your grandpa died
gotta be strong
or else you’re stillborn
maybe your grandma’s not right
beaten down by a horse
when she was young
no doctor, no painkillers, no aspirin
just a shakiness in the bones
whenever she tries to walk
a pain she refuses to express
an emptiness in the air around her
she has sold candy all her life
but still doesn’t believe
in the sweetness
don’t blame her
she didn’t ask for any of this
I guess the moral of the story
is that loving is hard
that your family
usually feels like a 50-car pileup
that we always gotta reach
through broken glass
with tenderness and precision
to pull out the heartbeats
that can translate brainwaves
so we can inch closer to the truth
and this journey
no matter how depressing it is
is worth it
that maybe the roots you are born with
will one day blossom into wings
and you can fly