I would have been purely enamored with her—she was so

sad, and pretty. Her eyes were a hundred

bright bright blues, like a butterfly’s scales

but crystal electric, like a shattered turquoise goblet.

She did not take away my ability

to love—with her elder sister, and my elder

sister, she taught it to me. And she did not

take my mind—the one thing

of value I was born with—my mother did not

take the simile away from me.

In Praise of the Tear Glands

How do the tear glands know to make

the most tears for the strongest feelings? I was

pressing a book hard to my breastbone, and I

understood it had “broken my heart” that there

had been so little about my father I could be proud of.

Even before my sister told me

the worst thing,

there was almost nothing to be proud of.

All I could come up with was when,

next to his apartment’s junior pool,

the inflated swan almost filling it,

he’d said, of his wife,

“I thought that she and I would be walking

up to the pearly gates hand in

hand together,” an apology

to her for his dying first. My cheeks

were dry as I hugged the book, but as soon as I

blinked there would come

not just drops

of tears but a sheet. And when the sheet, the salt

curtain, so wet it was not very salt, it was

almost fresh, poured down—it was expressed,

the regret. I had mourned my lack of respect

even before my sister told me

the worst, but now I more fully mourned our father,

mourned his life, for a moment almost

regretted he’d been born—but if he had not,

I would not have been born, and my sister would not have been born.

Goodbye

When I knew he would die soon—he was still alive—

I said goodbye, for my father, to the things of this earth.

Goodbye to the goose, to its crisp skin, to its wing,

and to ham, and to brown sugar, and the glaze that

holds the light just under its surface,

gold with yellow mustard. Goodbye

to carving the ham, the way the slice

falls away in rosy suppleness,

and carving the goose, ripping off the leg,

reaching deep into the cavity to scoop out the stuffing—

goodbye to carving the bodies of the animals of this land,

to standing there, carving them sober.

And to all the turkeys you carved drunk

when I was a child, goodbye to their hacked bodies,

to all the heavy dark bottles, every

bruise on your face, every knife,

goodbye to the old life and the new life.

Goodbye to being sober, to saying

grace like a boy, bowing your head,

goodbye to your silver hair, goodbye to God,

goodbye to closing your eyes, goodbye to the

perfect, raised dome of each eyeball.

Goodbye to the pool outside that lies there in the evening

like a dish of heaven, and to the sour cigars