The scent of hair was lemons.
We played Rocky and Bullwinkle
under the catalpa tree
and chewed mint gum made at a factory 
near our school, where I failed
so many tests, the smell
of exam booklets sweet and doughy
as I marked wrong answers
one after another.
On gray days, instead of watching
the blackboard, I’d watch smoke signals 
from the belching incinerator.
I still don’t know what
it wanted to tell me.

The streets stank
from diesel, from the glue factory,
from the neighboring stockyards.
But sometimes, before a storm, everything 
smelled earthy and electric. The sky
was green. We played Red Rover
until the thunder and rain came.
I went inside,
opened my book of fairy tales
printed in sharp smelling ink.
My mother stood at the ironing board
that was never put away,
steam rising from the clothes,
then disappearing.