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When he tells the story, I picture... a fire station close to her
bedroom at the corner penning red
hats of rescue. Mailmen and miners
waving like mayors to Aloysius,
who’d always beckon back
with little hands, a smear
of that day’s shed. Chickens
slung. Their nickled eyes
reflecting moonlight and flagging white
muscle in the yellow morning yore.
Sold for 10 cents a pound, 1934,
he’d say and never change
the numbers. The only boy
among sisters dying–
People would just die–back then.
Like Rose, ugly with TB.
She slept in the room with walls
of peeling layers posing young
lovers in rows of canoes and falling
willows. Nothing
resembling their sooty reality. When she died,
Aloysius continued to arrange
the slain his widowed mother made
for supper, for profit. Both eventually married
a fireman and his daughter.
For whatever it’s worth,
that’s how it all goes
and went.
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