Poem of the Month

family men

 

i'm descended from rascals and ward heelers on my mom's side and polish farmers on my dad's christmas was when i learned the difference made no difference because the damage was the same

 

christmas eve my mom's dad would pry himself out of his leather armchair rocker in the bedroom where the zenith black and white spoke unceasing sotto vocé he usually spared his gouty toe the grief of standing up except for adjusting the aluminum foil on the antenna and he'd put on the santa suit but only to get my grandmother to shut up already he'd done his forty years at dodgechrysler and lost a finger on the line and even if my mom was his favorite daughter can't a man be left alone to watch killer kowalski belly claw the sheik o mój Boże look the sheik bashed him over the head with a folding chair yes just now but that's only how I imagine him talking inside his head at least the beard hid the grim mouth he’d never dare to say it to her

face

 

and finally one year came and it was my grandmother wearing the santa suit we were never fooled no matter who wore it at least I wasn't but i was the oldest one time it was her brother the guy in with the guy in with the guy who drove the mayor around her brother limping with a cane because when he was a kid stealing coal in the rail yard to bring home to his dad he got his foot caught in a tie and a locomotive backing up cut his leg off above the knee my grandmother would tell that story as many times as we'd ask to hear it and i would remember it when we went to the rail yard to put pennies on the tracks he told everyone he went to u of m because he took an extension class there once another brother was in and out of jail a smart dresser he was her favorite

 

christmas afternoon we'd all five kids get in the station wagon for the drive down joseph campeau to the little triangle of streets where my dad's mom and dad lived and we'd sit in the living room with the bubbling electric candles on the tree and his dad who also worked for dodgechrysler but at a different plant looking portly and dignified in his three piece suit and delicate goldwirerimmed glasses trade the suit for overalls and ditch the glasses and he'd make half of a polish version of american gothic while the farmer's wife stayed in the kitchen where she was draining blood from a headless duck we weren't allowed to go there into an aluminum tub to make a gray soup that was a good portrait of their personalities and helped me understand later why he didn’t want to go back to poland with her to claim the land his brother had started plowing while they were making money in america even though he my grandfather promised it was just a few years well she went back and found the brother and waved the deeds at him all written in russian because of the partition and he ran her off with a pitchfork and she never stopped resenting him i mean my grandfather and never spoke to him

again

 

and don't get me started on how my uncle was born with a strawberry birthmark on his face which was the sign of the devil so he couldn't be the sacred secondborn son offered to god as a priest so my father who was third had to take his place but hated seminary so he enlisted and went to japan with the occupation where he met his first jew and learned what honeypots were and bought a crappy japanese rifle that he later kept in the attic with the firing pin sawed off and his old uniform he told us it was his superman suit but what i wanted to say was he went to college for a month on the g i bill but hated it as much as he hated seminary because here were all these kids two or three years younger making him look like the slow kid and met my mom and so no more priest and his mother never spoke to him again either not even when she was

dying

​

Through the reflections on the glass I watch the snow gusting sideways in the dark,

like the blizzard of sounds into which I was born,

the sounds becoming words that stick to each upright, leaning thing,

making it emerge.