Syntax

Side by side
is how we say it

anywhere that’s already
been assimilated. 

Side by each
is how they say it

in Woonsocket, in
Fall River, in New Bedford.

Here, we park the cars side by each.
You pass over my house, you stop on me.

Or at least that’s how they used to say it
back when the old folks
who learned English
as a substitution code
were still alive,
the ones we called
Meme, Pepe, 
Ava, Avo, 
Nonni, Nunna,
but never
Grammy or Gramps.

I haven’t been there in years,
not since anyone I knew there died. 
How do they talk in Social Coin now?
What do they say in Faurive? 
How long gone is the syntax we once mocked
and now wistfully repeat
to incredulous offspring and outsider friends? 
Damn it,

does anyone still
throw the baby downstairs a cookie?