Two Poems by Michael Simms

The Old Neighborhood

Frankie was working with a crew
replacing a roof in the old
neighborhood when two women

passed on the sidewalk below.
Frankie wolf-whistled, put
his hands behind his head

and gyrated his hips while
the other guys laughed. It was
a long day under a brutal sun

and harassing women was
one of the few perks of the job.
But it was a mistake

to target two women who
had grown up in the neighborhood
and knew a thing or two about

men. Annie, who was ten years
older than Frankie but looked
half her age, was a prison guard

and Maria, a teacher at
Southside High, had grown up
with four brothers. Annie

squinted at Frankie, pointed
and shouted I know who you are.
You’re Mario’s little brother.

Your mother Anastasia Zaveni
scrubbed floors every night of her life
after your pig of a father

left her with seven kids to raise
by herself. It would break
her heart to hear her son

yell at women on the
street, women who have sons
of their own. And Maria

joined in, shouting I’m going
over to Ruth Street right now
to tell Anastasia

you’re a pig just like your
father. And
Big Man Frankie shrank

to a small boy and pleaded
in a voice Annie and Maria
could barely hear

Oh please don’t tell my mother.
Please don’t. Annie could hear
the pain in his voice

and remembered Anastasia’s
shame at her poverty
and pride in her boys

and she knew she and Maria
would never tell Anastasia.
But the guys on the crew

roared with laughter
at Frankie getting schooled
by two tough broads,

and the rest of the day
the foreman gave Frankie
the roughest jobs on

the hottest part of the roof
and when Frankie complained
the other guys who now

remembered their own mothers,
sisters, wives and daughters
told him to shut his trap

or they would tell his mother
what a miserable excuse of a man
she’d raised.

*

Summers

Klaus and I painted
my house waiting
for my son to be born
Mac and I delivered
gravel all summer

The summer I taught
fourteen year old boys
unsteady in their desks
the summer the cop
arrested me in pity

The summer my first wife
fled from me and I woke
in the back of a truck
with men speaking Spanish

But that was long before
I woke every dawn
to swim two miles
beside the old man
who loved everyone

My son was born blue
in summer my daughter
pink in summer I remember
The summer of our delinquency
The summer of our deliverance

The summer I stole a surfboard
and spent the whole day
riding waves to shore

*

Michael Simms lives in the old Mount Washington neighborhood of Pittsburgh. His poetry collections include Jubal Rising (Ragged Sky, 2025.) His poems have appeared in Poetry (Chicago), Plume, Scientific American and Poem a Day (Academy of American Poetry). He is the founding editor of Autumn House Press and Vox Populi. In 2011, the Pennsylvania legislature awarded Simms a Certificate of Recognition for his service to the arts.