I am the age
my father never was
spring planting

arguing healthcare
my father forgets
his blood pressure  

gay wedding
his father gave him away
years ago

my father and I
quarreling face to face
exchange breath

planting season all these tubes coming out of him

robin’s egg blue
how my father would have loved
my son

brush strokes—
the mother
I’ll never be

Mother’s Day
most of our verbs
in past tense

her silence
enters the granite
of her sons’ headstones

the childhood
my mother glosses over. . .
black ice

soapsuds ...
mother tells me how
she’d like to die

Mother’s Day
still unwrapping
the lies she told me

over the loom
a spider weaves
with grandma

grandma’s kitchen the silver polish smells of moonlight

grandma’s birthday-
counting the rings
on her aged fingers

first serial publication
grandma asks
when I started drinking

hearing aid—
grandma now complains
about the squirrels

tall tales in the shade—
grandpa shifts his tobacco
to the other cheek

dawn moon—
grandfather quietly candling
our morning eggs

wee hours in the big house
after Granddad’s wake
my uncles’ snoring

behind the deli counter
my grandfather’s dreams
sliced thin

around the table
three generations
in the candles’ glow

amid war 
and rumors of war. . .
another grandchild

recalling a song
from his first language
apricot blossoms

bedside vigil. . .
she asks me again
if I watered her violets

telling granddad I smoke he raises my allowance

crescent moon -
the curve
of her mill-worn fingers

faint smell of his pipe . . .
a shoebox of photos,
   his face scratched out