River Road, East Paterson 
               for my father

Each year, when the river freezes
north of Dundee Lake,
he parks his green Rambler
across from the high school
along the bank.  He opens the door, 
lets the dog run, stretches one leg out 
to avoid a cramp. After a day or so grocery
carts begin to appear on the ice. 
Through the windshield he can just see
Grand Union on the handles.
The carts slide together, converse, 
like the break room in the old days
at the Marcal plant up the road. 
He keeps an eye out to catch
any movement,
any change in alliance.
Soon the spring melt will creep up
and, on rainy days,
flood across the street. 
The carts will gradually sink
until nothing is visible 
but a small steel pyramid
that juts out from broken ice — 
the only proof of the tangle below.





Tattoos


The ink journeys down the arms of the man
on the beach; dragon wings, recently added,
wrap around his  back, meet at his belly — the 
landscape blurs over rolls of stretched skin. 

At a summer business meeting, my neighbor’s
legs are trapped — black opaque stockings 
cover sunflower vines;  she regrets  the 
drunken dare in her last  month of high school. 

My former boss’s right shoulder is sculpted 
with a butterfly in mid flight, just above the 
line of a strapless dress;  her plan is to leave
her husband but he never looks up. 

My friend’s son is haunted by his roommate’s 
senseless death — random bullets in a Virginia 
Tech hallway — a ribboned Rest in Peace 
shields his back and finally frees him. 

And my three dots, a triangled bulls eye, just 
right of my heart, guided weeks of radiation,
a darkened room, a cold steel table — one 
mark still visible if I lean slightly forward.





What If, As Your Sister Claimed
                     for my father

A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth.                              
                                                                                              -Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried 

What if you were never on that battleship, as 
your sister claimed, when she heard your voice

on the tape I mailed to her after your funeral? 
What if you never went to the latrine — there 

was no explosion, no friends left behind on
the deck, no shrapnel in your leg? What if

you hadn’t spent months in a hospital, tending 
the gash that she argued was from an accident

in your father’s bakery? What if there was
no purple heart — you didn’t give it away to

a stranger?  That day we talked for hours; I
recorded it all. Years later my friend asked

if I was curious about what really happened, 
but I already knew.  It was a war story.  





Neisners


My father brings us here Mondays 
before school — his only day off
after a week of nights, of hot ovens.

We mount red vinyl stools.
The aisles behind us
gated, in shadows. 

I can’t see my sister through him,
but that doesn’t stop the random
pokes and hair pulls.

He unfolds the Post, scans the 
headlines, reads and rants.
Gert knows our order.

Before we can spin once, two
chocolate milks and a coffee 
appear. Her voice is thick.

We can’t always understand,
but my father says it is English  
(jumbled with German).

When the food comes, they 
kibitz; he turns back to the paper.
Gert wipes the surface, fills 

sugars and ketchups for the lunch rush.
His fist suddenly slams the counter;
the plate of easy-overs slides to the floor:

Eichmann, Mengele — safe in South
America, he yells. Those Nazi bastards. 
We hope he doesn’t blame her.





For You


I hang up the kitchen phone.
I just heard yet another tale 
of my friend swept away
by a stranger she met on the Internet. 
Dinner at Boulé. An overnight at his 
West Village brownstone.

I slump in the chair. He yawns, wipes the
coffee grounds on his already stained t-shirt. 
I have a surprise. My chest tightens. 
He leaves for a brief moment and returns 
with a basket of laundry neatly folded-
For you, he smiles, for you.