Home Planet News

a journal of literature & art

10-Oh Rosemarie

Oh Rosemarie

They were buried in separate cemeteries.

                  Rosemarie Uva, age 31, and her 29 year old

husband Thomas Uva were in their Mercury

Topaz, in heavy traffic and stopped

at a light when each took three bullets.

The Topaz kept rolling and hit a parked car.

Christmas Eve morning.  The Uvas were out

last-minute shopping.  Ex-cons, for six

months they’d robbed social clubs allegedly

owned by the Mafia.  Christmas Eve

in Ozone Park, her police officer brother

had to tell his mother her daughter’s dead.

She had dark brown eyes, long brown hair.

A clear night in December, at the wheel

of the idling Topaz she watched two kids

wearing hoods cross the street.

A jet’s roar faded as the plane climbed.

The radio playing “sittin on the dock..,”

Thomas bolted out the Paradise Club’s door.

His Uzi and a bag filled with cash

and jewelry in back, he got in beside her.

They sped off.  Three blocks later, riding

shotgun in a Caddy, James Rocco wrote

on a matchbook the Topaz’s plate number.

Pete Mladinic

Home Planet News