So we thought through the getting-


worse time of blackbirds & the voices

of our parents. The uncovered,

unadorned kitchen table shivered


more gently; the trains, it seemed,


had slowed. Father stopped brushing


the mud from his shoes when he left


in the morning, moving forth

into the nowhere-gray. Most nights


he returned with a newspaper

& a beard. Sometimes he didn’t return


at all & we didn’t ask why. Mother

clutched her rosary beads & filled


our bowls halfway with soup, insisting


always we scrub our skin well


but the powdery soap burned, dismayed


us. I concealed peanuts & raisins

in the spine of my geometry book,


hungry before lunchtime.

Sundays were the worst, homilies


on patience & frugality, how they suffered


in the desert with nothing inside them


but words. Communion meant

dark comedy: not enough bread,


not enough wine. Father despised


the priest when he drank up

what we had not. In April 1933

I tore the backyard rose bush up


& planted apple seeds there, dreaming


of pie with cinnamon & milk. In May

—
impatient—I ate the fledgling sprouts


myself, chewing them slowly. How bitter,


how it was not quite to be a man.