THE HEAT

At night as the heat’s
warble strummed to
a ticking silence,
and the crabgrass
turned blue then green
then black, the branches
above would relax
and gently pluck my
window-screen, like
the dark-haired woman
who, years later, would
scratch to be let in.

**

UNKNOWING

Your father was born after the earthquake & fire.
Began work at four, buried his mother at six.
Summers he picked prunes in the valley,
the sun searing spots onto his narrow shoulders.
He lost an eye. Blew out his left ear-drum
in a packing plant accident. These things
were what one expected.

He never made friends. They were a luxury,
he could not afford. He smoked for a decade,
through college, when he worked full-time as a
teacher. Nights he dedicated to numbers. Found
pleasure in the orderly arrangement of the known
world. You were a gift, born at the end of the
depression, to his German wife—unaware of
the rubble from which you emerged.

You were a … Read More »