Poetry
For his sixty-sixth birthdaythe nurse brought my father spice cakeI don’t know whether he couldeat it himself or she fed him aspart of her duties.He said, “That’s about asspecial as it gets in here”
Coming back always went fast.We fell asleep on the rear seatin happy tangle and were homebefore we wished it.My father carried usto our beds, my youngerbrothers limp and soft,easily moved.
Draw a line to five, when Frank Bitsueis hauling water from the well then counthis living grandchildren and divide themby the ones who chased sheep into the rain.Subract the crash. Add summers and sleep of
I guess you didn't get my letter, since youdied before I put it in the mail.But maybe that's OK—I mean, whatwas left to say anyway? Confession (I neverenjoyed hunting, or peeing in public)?
In cold darkness calling from tree to treeLaughing at our foolish dreamsCrooning love in a long lost keyFeathers at once oil slick and tricksterSwitchblade beaks
How morning can be transalpine
How the vestiges of summer are falling
How the window can be empty and still
How the curtain isn't moving
How the bed curtails movement
How fear can be found
Born in an Illinois barn,
that two-headed calf
became a coin Frank flipped
through World War Two,
judging heaven from
a foxhole. “God loves evil…
Not looking up at
those lugubrious geese who
knows if they looked
Perhaps someone saw
their underglow there riding
in sight of twilight
This kind of light holds
They come out of the 1940's
to be your parents. Their faces
swim and settle into clarity.
The crook of an arm. The fount
of a breast. They come from
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