Under the Freeway

UNDER THE FREEWAY
(Merced, CA)
—Charles Mariano, Sacramento, CA

Years ago
when Mama talked about someone,
I’d stop her occasionally
and ask
where this person lived

She’d wave her arm a direction
left or right, and say,

“Ohh, they lived over there, under the freeway”

At first I thought
it was people
who lived underground,

then realized, as I grew older
she must’ve meant homeless people
camped out
a long time ago,
under the overpass

Why would I doubt it?
we were poor, so in Mama’s day,
pitifully poorer

Years later,
home from college one day,
Mama was telling me a story
about my relatives, and said
they too
lived under the freeway

“Wait a minute, Tio Vicente and Tia Lupe
lived under the freeway?” I asked

I knew for a fact
they didn’t,
so that had to be wrong

“Just the other side of 13th”
she answered,
pointing towards M Street

I look out the kitchen window
of our house
the projects on 12th & K,
and about five hundred yards
was the massive presence
of Highway 99

“Si Mijo,” she says,
waving her arms and pointing
that direction again,

“Before the 99
smashed down all their houses,
they lived right there,
under the freeway”

__________________

Our thanks to Charles Mariano for his creative take on our Seed of the Week, “Under the house”. Houses "under the freeway", before there was a freeway. Of course.

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