Family & Ancestors

Let’ s make believe
I am happy, I laugh
Black poison, all of me
Its bottleful,
Become sparkling water
My cup runneth over
I am your son
You are my daughter,
The only one

I went out walking
in the old neighborhood

Look! more trees on the block
forget-me-nots all around them
ivylantana shining
and geraniums in the window

Twenty years ago
it was believed that the roots of trees
would insert themselves into gas lines
then fallpoisonedon houses and children

This is about the women of that country
Sometimes they spoke in slogans
They said
We patch the roads as we patch our sweetheart’ s trousers
The heart will stop but not the transport
They said
We have ensured production even near bomb craters
Children let your voices sing higher than the explosions

i was left out
i was chosen second & then left out
i was left
handed i was left
to fend for myself i
was the second in
command the second
in line i came
without direction

*
i want the
milk i want my
first pick i want
choice & all its implications there was a

*
residue of
scar
between us it chafed
when we rubbed our
chests together

*
hello, brother, hello?
hello in there, brother, can you
hear me? it's a long
tunnel to the grave speak

my dad's going to give me a self
back.
i've made an altar called
The Altar for Healing the Father & Child,
& asked him what i could do
for him so he would
do nice for me. he said i should stop
saying bad things about him &, since
i've said just about everything bad
i can think of &, since... well,
no, i change my
mind, i can't promise
him that. but even healing is
negotiable, so, if he's in
heaven (or trying
to get in), it wouldn't hurt

Men who have hardly uncurled
from their posture in the
womb. Naked. Heads bowed, not
in prayer, but in contemplation
of the earth they came from,
that suckled them on the brown
milk that builds bone not brain.

Who called them forth to walk
in the green light, their thoughts
on darkness? Their women,
who are not Madonnas, have babes
at the breast with the wise,
time-ridden faces of the Christ
child in a painting by a Florentine

The wooden scent of wagons,
the sweat of animals — these places
keep everything — breath of the cotton gin,
black damp floors of the icehouse.

Long scree of pill bottles
spilling over the tipped brim
of the wicker basket, fifty or more,
a hundred,

your name on every one and under
your name the brusque rune of instructions —
which ones to take, how many, and often,
on what days,

A telephone line goes cold;
birds tread it wherever it goes.
A farm back of a great plain
tugs an end of the line.

I call that farm every year,
ringing it, listening, still;
no one is home at the farm,
the line gives only a hum.

Some year I will ring the line
on a night at last the right one,
and with an eye tapered for braille
from the phone on the wall

I will see the tenant who waits —
the last one left at the place;
through the dark my braille eye
will lovingly touch his face.

Thanks, Ray, this is just what the doctor ordered.

No, you never see me have one with olives — your father likes
olives but I can’ t stand them.

No, cocktail onions are just picked small. Turn that down, Dan.