[New-Poetry] Autobiographical

[David Graham]

Autobiographical

The minute my brother gets out of jail I want
some answers: when our mother
murdered our father
did she find out first, did he tell her -- the pistol's tip
parting his temple's fine hairs -- did he
tell her where our sister (the youngest, Alice)
hid the money Grandma (mother's side)
stole from her Golden Age Group?
It was a lot of money but enough to die for?
was what Mom said she asked him,
giving him a choice. I'll see you in hell,
she said Dad said
and then she said (this is in the trial transcript): Not
any time soon, needle dick!
We know Alice hid the money -- she was arrested

a week later in Tacoma for armed robbery,
which she would not have done
if she had it. Alice was (she died
of a heroin overdose six hours after making ball)
syphilitic, stupid, and rude
but not greedy. So she hid the money,
or Grandma did,
but since her stroke can't say a word,
doesn't seem to know anybody.
Doing a dime at Dannemora
for an unrelated sex crime, my brother
might know something but won't answer
my letters, refuses to see me,
though he was the one who called me
at divinity school

after Mom was arrested. He could hardly
get the story out from laughing
so much: Dad had missed
his third in a row the day before with his parole officer,
the cops were sent
to pick him up (Bad timing, said Mom) and, found him
before he was cold.
He was going back to jail anyway, Mom said,
said the cops,
which they could and did use against her
to the tune of double digits, which means,
what with the lupus, she's guaranteed
to die inside. Ask her?
She won't talk to me.
She won't give me the time of day.

--Thomas Lux.  New & Selected Poems 1975-1995.  Houghton Mifflin, 1997.


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David Graham
grahamd at ripon.edu

Home Page:
http://web.mac.com/drjazz/iWeb/Site/About%20Me.html

Poetry Library:
http://web.mac.com/drjazz/iWeb/Site/DGPoLibrary.html
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