Oh, backyard

You are serenaded by a singer who sounds like Janis Joplin

A guitarist who sounds like Jeff Buckley

A blues radio station

And Musica Romantica full blast from the body shop next door

You host debris including the world’s first dog chain

An old wheelchair someone brought home drunk

The first nail

Glass shards

Lots of dog poo

A yellow marble

And wood that my neighbor wants to use to build his own home one day, he says wistfully

“They must teach classes in white trash fence building,” said a visitor about your collaged junk fence, which, by the way, was not actually being held together by the world’s first dog chain, despite appearances

“You should glue shells on it!” said another visitor, more enthusiastically

But backyard, there is only so much authenticity one can take before they must augment their own into the mix

I covered up your fence

What color shall I stain the new one?

Backyard, I ask you

Would you paint the new fence?

Blue and white, alternating?

Or circus colors?

Would you stain it?

Would you graffiti it?

Or would you just leave it, so that one day, someone can comment on how authentic it looks?

Backyard, along with me, you shelter a dark, tattooed guy from Richmond, Virginia

He wears top siders with his ripped khaki pants

But he doesn’t often wear a shirt

To my delight

“What’s up,” he says to me when I greet him, breathless with affection

Then his iphone beeps

Backyard, is it a girl who’s beeping?

You have also hosted the first ever party of Japanese fashion designers in Bushwick

And the first and only games of Carrom

Your mosquitos are very annoying

But I am leaving the empty Pabst can up high on your fence where a mechanic must have left it when he moved the red shipping container

Oh backyard, you are such a scene.