Brown Street
by Paula Amen Judah
I want to walk
with my mother on
Brown Street again,
catch the breath of
clothy steam from
Money's Cleaners,
hear the bell jingling
against the thick glass door as
patrons come and go,
see Mr. Money
counting out change
into the cupped hands of children
sent in to pick up
their father's slacks.
I want to shade my
eyes against the
dark blue glint of
the tiles that line the
front of the Napa P.D.
where I posed
limp-shouldered
and alone in
my Easter bonnet,
chin and mouth
turned down, beneath
the shadow of my
sister's stiff refusal
to enter the picture.
I want to walk
with my mother on
Brown Street again,
visit the wide lobby
of the Plaza Hotel,
its overstuffed chairs with
their rough upholstery
sitting just inside the door,
the smell of bourbon
trailing over from
Novelli's bar where
through a red straw
I tasted my first
Shirley Temple,
waiting in the muted light with dad
and the rest of the cops
for the bus to the 49er game.
I want to run
with my mother
across Brown Street
in the early morning,
skip up the stairs of
the old Court House
past suited lawyers
and punctual clerks
and men in overalls,
want to hear again
the echo of footsteps
on marble floors, the
sound of the bailiff's
steady All rise,
the strike of the
gavel's authority
on dark wood.
I want to inhale the
air of that reliable
building and stop
to read the gold print
on the windowed doors:
Assessor
Superior Court
I want to walk with my mother
on Brown Street again.
Paula Amen Judah
Paula Amen Judah is a writer born in the Nebraska and raised in Napa, California. On a solo camping trip north, she fell in love with the Siskiyou Mountains and settled there working as a high school counselor and poetry teacher. She co-authored If Not to History: Recovering the Stories of Women in Napa, 2007 and Napa Valley Farming, 2011. Her first chapbook, Premonition, was published by Cordella Magazine in 2012. A second chapbook, Añoranza, will be released in 2016.