Donald
Rose, now might I see you with your thin face and
buck -toothed smile and pain of rheumatism
and a long black heavy shoe for your bony left leg,
limping down the long hall in
Newark on the running carpet
past the black grand piano in the day room,
where the parties were, and I sang
Spanish
boyless songs in a high squeaky voice,
hysterical.
The committee listening,
or who lived around the room,
collected the money.
Aunt
Honey,
Uncle
Sam, a stranger with a cloth
arm in his pocket,
and huge, young, bald head of
Abraham
Lincoln
Bri gade.
Your long, sagged face,
your tears of sexual frustration,
what smothered sobs and bony hips
under the pillows of
Osborne
Terrace.
The time I stood on the toilet seat,
na ked,
And you powdered my thighs with calamine against the poison I ate,
my tinkered and shamed first black curled hairs.
What were you thinking in secret of art then,
knowing me, a man already?
And
I, an ignorant girl, a family silence on the thin pedestal
of my legs in the bathroom.
Hitler is in eternity, is with
Chamberlain and
Emily
Bronte.
Oh, I see you walking still, a ghost on
Os borne
Terrace, down the long
dark hall to the front
door, limping along with a pinched smile in what must have been the silken flower dress,
welcoming my father,
the poet, on his visit to
Newark.
See you arriving in the living room,
dancing on your crippled leg and clapping hands as
a woman had been accepted by the
Demirite.
Hitler is dead and the
Marites are not a business.
The attic of the past and everlasting
minute are out of print.
Uncle
Harry sews his last silk stocking.
Clare quit interpretive
dancing school.
Bubba sets a wrinkled monument.
old ladies won't plead for their
new babies.
Last time I saw you was the hospital,
pale skull protruding under ashen skin, blue -veined
unconscious girl in an oxygen tent.
The war in
Spain has ended long ago, at
Rose.
You