A Vision

Monday, July 15, 2013
His long underwear, and that time
carrying his overnight
slop bucket, spare room through kitchen,
flicked sign from our mother, her
cease and desist over eggs or
oatmeal, days some said grammar school,
still arithmetic at a tablet,
the Virgin Mary eked out to
high plastic on a shelf.
Old, older than prayer, than any
buzzing in the trees, any should or you
shouldn’t, his looking not
left nor right, fixed
slow, the union suit stained,
stretched, the split back
a backside. To ghost
is a verb. The body fits or
it isn’t. The Beatles about to be
bigger than Jesus, my brother wise-guying
secret bolts from the blue, me
to my hiding and hidden, head bent
over the last most vapid
good-girl book. Broke off in space
a room, my grandfather in it
zoomed midcentury, born
to the lost real one,
left, little town downstate, silent
ticking house he wound
and oiled with a feather.
Nightsoil, a name that
looks away, his hand gripping
the metal rim. The worst
is kindness. To see
like it’s nothing, our zero to his
gone, going invisible
doomed delicate step and step
by step by now.


Monday, July 1, 2013