He says
fix your teeth
money is not an issue
and I say I cannot
they are the days of living in the cellar
they are the ghosts living and dead in that house
the uniforms, the sixty in a classroom, the yanked hair
iron ruler, the slapped cheek,
stoop men with their dirty mouths
break-ins, graffiti, prowling gangs
kicks, robberies, held breath
unfaithful father, mother anger rigid
unspeakable crimes, neglected cousins, babies cradle capped, flat headed,
the climb
cracked sidewalks and broken streets
old lady crying for her lost dog
Bronx in the voice and in the brain
library books, Daily News and TV Guide,
the climb
the dark in the reign of the blonde,
the thick in the time of the twig
father unfleshed and dead at 35
mother balding and desperate, with three children
hours at work, every labor law broken,
subways, the stench, the hands of men in crowds,
the books, the words, the search, the escape
the climb
the tribal love of a broken broken people.
These roots grow crooked
but true.
Proust had his madeleine
Stepping out of a store
into the exhaled cloud of a stranger’s Newport
suddenly it is 1962 and I am seven
breathing in my Mémé’s smoky kitchen.
She is laughing with my father, her eyes a squint, her mannish legs splayed out before her
like a frog’s
their hair – he still has hair – is bear black
they almost spill their whiskey
their smiles draw back almost hooking over their ears
and I see all their teeth exactly alike in their broad Métis faces
she says that her father’s Indian name was Running Bear
he says no, Running Bare-Ass, or Running From Bear, or Barely Running
it’s so easy to make her laugh
and she chokes out her smoke blooms
Cha cha cha
and at this moment
even though she left him as a baby
and took off with some man and the daughter she loved
and never came back to be his mother
this is the reason
we drove all the way here
from our house
so he can almost be her son
in the smoke of
this moment.
My Father, Fishing
Summers
on the water
my father went fishing
and under the pretense of
family
we all boarded the same small boat
no more
with
him
than the churning worms
in the bucket.
And from the impaling of the first worm
a centipede of prehistoric size
a marvel of segmentation and synchronicity
I knew.
And some of the fish yanked out of the green blackness
were the right fish,
the blues,
the flounders,
the blackfish,
and these were tossed into the box with torn mouths
gasping and twisting for their air.
Some were the wrong fish,
the small fish, the bony ones,
the blowfish
inflating even as the hook
is ripped out,
but his clever defense just amuses my father
for a moment
before he head whacks him on the outboard
and flicks him back
muttering
little shit won’t steal
my
bait again
nor will he know twice
the misfortune
of meeting a hook
invisibly
inexorably leading through sea and salt and time
back to my father.
On a Daughter’s Departure
Only September 4th
and the dry leaves
are eddying
into small islands.
You are on a plane headed for a continent
a long day
and night
away
and I know
there must be a lovely pattern
to the arcs of leaf red and corn yellow
if seen from above
but
I see
only trees
who
in their mute wisdom
know
that though their arms are empty,
they were born
for this.