ISSUE: Fall 2005
How, years later, when I think of those beds
And my father’s obvious displeasure,
Am I to believe she ever took him in her hand,
And then into her,
Returning her petals to the stem?
From here on there’s only the nightstand beside him,
My dead mother’s wedding ring and rosary
Tangled in the back of its drawer.
Billeted upon that small celibate bed,
How could he have risen the next morning
Or any of the ones to come, only to enter the world
At Homestead, where light from the river,
Our poor open sewer, has backed up again?
How could she have sent him into such a day,
Or I have slept so soundly, all those years,
Right down the hallway?
