His books huddle together 
on shelves like abandoned lovers,
begging to be read aloud.

I count thirty-five by Irish authors
Like Joyce he loved to quote: 
Do you think life is a paradox?

A quiet man, he let himself be 
in Ulysses's lines without punctuation, 
running each other over.  

The oxygen mask removed, 
his breath stopped; his pulse silent,
the attendants carried him away.

Not the way the hero goes out 
in a Forties movie, smile on his face.
Here’s lookin’ at you!

Last June on Bloomsday, we walked Dublin streets. 
Joyce look-alikes cartwheeled past.
I’ve always been bad at endings.
                        

I sprinkle it for paprikash, 
The wooden spoon stirs the tiny granules,
brings you back, mother. 

You sing in me, a gypsy song. 
I hear your Hungarian syllables.
You live on my tongue. 

Sweeten our loss.
Savory, intimate, paprika speaks 
to me in the language of love. 

I drown in its crystals.
Sweet or smoky,
Its bright red sets me on fire.

Paprika marched with armies, nomads,
across the steppes on to Hungary —
fierceness like a scimitar.

Mother, I need you 
more than my fingernails, 
my toes. 
                        

My brother thought he would live to one hundred 
and would have I think, if he didn’t keep falling down.

It was no surprise that taking his Pekingese 
for a walk in the park that overlooks the San Francisco Bay,

he tumbled backwards and hit his head. 
He organized the plot where his ashes would be buried 

on a Tamalpais mountainside, wrote his four-page obituary 
that talked of working with famous actors like Vincent Price.

Went out into the air with handsomeness, 
tall, slender, a dark complexion like our father’s. 

Night rolls in like a funeral caisson, 
I watch A Suitable Boy on Netflix.

I won’t hear his big brother voice go on, 
explaining why the heroine married the wrong man.