Christina Hauck

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Exile

I don't know what they fight about, my neighbors
night after night, the swift Mandarin syllables
escaping through thin walls. I think they're poor.
She cleans houses, he makes won-ton he sells
door-to-door. Sometimes I watch their son
dribble a ball across the parking lot
tip it into a basket he imagines.
Lanky and sad, he always makes his shot.

I don't know what they laugh about either
evenings their friends drop in. Now the building
smells like heaven, hungry angels chatter
and laugh. Life is good, I say, holding
one ear against the wall, the other to a phone
waiting for you to pick up, call me home.

Christina Hauck was born and raised in the East San Francisco Bay Area. Since 1994, she's called Kansas home. A retired English professor (KSU, Manhattan) she currently lives in Lawrence (small blue dot, big red sea) with her wife, two cats, and a toy poodle, Tango, who runs the household. She has published poetry in many small journals, most recently in Collateral, Monterey Review, and Stone Circle Review. She has poems forthcoming in Coal City Review, Flint Hills Review, Mocking Heart Review, and Street Light Magazine. You can often find her in her garden.