By Erik Kay
"Here’s a close-cropped shot
of my father’s house
when it looked its best:
freshly scraped, primed, and painted
white siding; lacy lattice below the porch;
frill-less columns linked by frill-less banister;
my matching bedroom windows above,
trimmed in forest green,
through which I’d wade on warm evenings
or train-clang clamoring winter nights,
to have a Camel and watch police lights
swerve out from HQ to crimes unknown;
lazy sun-room windows--warped and old,
the bottoms of the panes thicker than the tops
because glass is really a slow-moving liquid
and we did the best we could with what we had
when Dad’s checkbook slipped from balance
to debt to unendurable stress,
like when we ate ‘depression recipes’
gifted from grandparents I’d never met
because they drank themselves to death
before I slipped my umbilical noose into
into a dictator’s birth."
Comments