LITMIR.BIZ

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we would never become,

      barking after leaves, touchdowns.

      We’ve never really known the other,

      he and I, though we are each equally

      amused at his brother. I speak outrageous,

      out of touch with the West Side:

      wrenches, car frames, his blunt

      assessment of anything near at hand.

      For his part, he fishes around

      for things to say: kids, beer and food.

      The rest is sports teams.

      I still like him though: one

      of the only strangers I’ll ever know,

      brother to my past, blood, brother

      who does what he does

      because he has no home.

      Pix’s horse

      has been left afield—though with

      or without her new teeth (a nice set),

      she’s always been real as the red

      in a swirl of autumn leaves—

      is there the moment she picks up the phone.

      Her eyes wane: a mercy, perhaps,

      given how much she’s seen of this world.

      Even her aneurysms sing her praise.

      There are many people like her,

      of course—the undecorated, the constant,

      amid what will defeat us all in the end.

      She could be a Quarles emblem:

      Patience, a little old woman, stooped

      at a bend in the road, waiting

      with a nice slice of pie.

      Neither she nor her hubby have jobs,

      often, but they do not change her.

      More than anyone else,

      she’s given our name a house to live in.

      These days, she’s usually playing poker

      when I arrive. You can watch her

      on the internet. I sometimes think

      it’s because we don’t have much to say,

      but suspect, rather, that it’s

      the adrenaline: little kings marching

      out your door—always, in one way

      or another. And who likes that?

      It’s worse than an empty fridge, except

      for baloney spread, because you can’t

      get them back, or anything else really.

      Grandma McElwee’s Irish house

      felt like a 50s Catholic Church:

      cool, dark, reverent—large painted statues,

      wavering votive candles, a sliding

      Confessional screen. And doilies!

      They made her polished end tables, old lamps,

      seem other—like something out of Joyce.

      She loved us, in earnest, quietly,

      like the swish of young cassocks in a nave.

      Pillow mints in small bowls graced her table;

      a fine, smooth ironed white cloth beneath.

      Outside, a transistor radio pressed

      to my ear on her front steps, I caught

      Baltimore baseball: a game from another

      city! It shocked me, the want in those

      announcing voices, the crowd in the stands

      as well; each needing Oriole success

      as much as I needed that for my own team.

      How many people there must be out there

      in the world. What place could I have,

      make for myself? Surely there were doctors

      there, a ton of scientists. Even if I learned

      enough, there was the question

      of perseverance. At 7, what had I ever

      seen through; what could I, always

      so far from any goal, achieve?

      It was like walking into a library

      for the first time, seeing all those books.

      I would never finish them.

      As I went back inside, small boy, Grandma,

      always, in memory, in a black dress: I asked

      her to pray for me to the woman

      framed in palms fronds, St. Therese.

      I could see her fret. (She said she would.)

      But the thing is, I don’t think

      it’s different for anybody. We are all

      ill-equipped, not ready for anything,

      not ready to be heroes. We are still

      on a porch or in a dark room, a quiet radio

      or a family of voices pressed like mercy—

      yes—into our ears.

      My parents bought me

      a tall cardboard store one Christmas,

      empty labeled cans, boxes for the shelves.

      It was generous; and though I liked feeling

      that I might have a grocer’s place

      in this world—I didn’t.

      Did I want to sell my helpful sister

      some beans? Why, yes I did!

      But that was it: no conversation, no tension,

      no narrative; just “You shop,” “I sell.”

      Another possible direction—dashed!

      A young Shelley

      would have been good company

      at that point: all the tides and empty seas

      in the world—in a grey basement—

      everything reduced to what was not there!

      How quickly, I wonder, did that little shop

      get set aside? How quickly did the cardboard

      age, bend, unattended; how quickly did it,

      like my parents’ optimism,

      find its way to the curb?

      Parental silence is a horrible thing:

      watching as they sift, trying to guide.

      Thankfully, my position of Professor

      is much easier to maintain, probably

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