Atomic haze obscures the city’s past:
the sugar factory, the tourist traps,
the glass aquarium at water’s edge,
the sleek black Constellation, its long mast
stretching across the harbor to the sea.
My parents stand here in a photograph
snapped when they were younger than I am now.
My mother wears a faux-astrakhan hat,
my father an enormous winter coat
sewn by my mother. Sketches of pale snow
line the sidewalk, as if spray-painted on.
Behind them the neon sign emblazoned
DOMINO Sugars, in stylized letters, looms.
They wear the happy masks of the married
though each of them conceals a trick lover
in their back pocket like a false passport.
Baltimore was a way station on the road
to nowhere. They hated it, my mother
with a passion she reserved for enemies
and foods that caused her migraines. I inherited
that great coat from my father when he died.
I still have it. Years later, a fire broke out
in the refinery ‒ flames licking the skyline
golden tongues lapping up all that sweetness.

This language is forest fire, warning shot, amulet.
It hugs and kisses like a vanished grandmother,
rests its head on your shoulder, whispers
sweet somethings ‒ brisket simmering in the pot,
the crisp snap of a pickle, the epiglottis
shimmering in the throat. Each word possesses
its own dictionary, its own sea of commentary.
It can never be learned; it can only be remembered.

She blesses each long thin candle one by one
twisting their shy little necks into the hollow brass
fingers, thumb and index brittle as bone.
All evening, a pale light lingers—
our living room alive with shadow play,
the curtain a stage, a Chinese theater.
Nana’s voice is the voice of the dead
gathering in her, swelling in her throat
like a column of smoke, her tiny prayer book
lit fire in her hands.