In the new New Yorker
I read the story by Bolaño
and swooned. I read the three poems
and felt envy and remembered.

Earlier I wrote a directive to myself
to remember to write an essay
about my deforming thumbs.

My brother's radio is loud with stupid music
and my language evaporates like steam
in wisps I grasp vainly for
like a dream I must remember
but which cannot be recalled.

***

The redhaired children, little neighbor boy and girl,
confusing their dates, stayed the night here
Saturday, and tried to spend the days on either side
as well. I spurned them before and after,
weary and dreary as I am now always.
So only the late afternoon and evening -
they drew pictures of my cats and colored them
orange and purple and green; they
watched the supper assembling
and exulted later in their full plates.

When they slept it was together on my brother's bed,
like diminutive angels curled into themselves
and somehow glowing, and the morning was all toast
and oatmeal and further drawings, more ambitious
projects using colored paper and glue - "Deaven's House"
with three upper-story window flaps that opened and shut
and behind each flap a sibling facing out,
and concealed in a corner at bottom
the mother
and the new stepfather
facing each other.

They went home when I shoo'd them away midmorning
with smiles and hugs, and later in the day I slept three hours
and hadn't known how tired I was. They'll move away
next Saturday. Already their trampoline
has been dismantled and removed.

***

Last night I dreamed I saw my father's name
in a scrap of newsletter, as offering a class.
I traveled to North Carolina to the address shown.
I entered the home he shared with parents
and siblings' families. George Mills. Taught literacy
evenings to the underprivileged. He was quiet.
He wore glasses. He was respectfully distant
but not un-warm. Hurt, it seemed by my years
of absence. I didn't know, I didn't know my refrain
and my excuse. There was a pier and a ferry.
I embraced my father, held my lips near his, knew
it would be misconstrued, I just felt so loving
and grateful to have found this missing piece.