To Aunt Rose

Aunt Rose—now—might I see you

with your thin face and buck tooth smile and pain

                    of rheumatism—and a long black heavy shoe

                            for your bony left leg

  limping down the long hall in Newark on the running carpet

                    past the black grand piano

                            in the day room

                                    where the parties were

            and I sang Spanish loyalist songs

                    in a high squeaky voice

                            (hysterical) the committee listening

                    while you limped around the room

                            collected the money—

  Aunt Honey, Uncle Sam, a stranger with a cloth arm

                    in his pocket

                        and huge young bald head

                          of Abraham Lincoln Brigade

—your long sad face

            your tears of sexual frustration

                    (what smothered sobs and bony hips

                          under the pillows of Osborne Terrace)

  —the time I stood on the toilet seat naked

            and you powdered my thighs with calamine

                    against the poison ivy—my tender

                          and shamed first black curled hairs

  what were you thinking in secret heart then

                    knowing me a man already—

  and I an ignorant girl of family silence on the thin pedestal

                    of my legs in the bathroom—Museum of Newark.

                                  Aunt Rose

  Hitler is dead, Hitler is in Eternity; Hitler is with

                    Tamburlane and Emily Brontë

Though I see you walking still, a ghost on Osborne Terrace

                    down the long dark hall to the front door

            limping a little with a pinched smile

                    in what must have been a silken

                                          flower dress

    welcoming my father, the Poet, on his visit to Newark

                    —see you arriving in the living room

                          dancing on your crippled leg

                      and clapping hands his book

                          had been accepted by Liveright

Hitler is dead and Liveright’s gone out of business

The Attic of the Past and Everlasting Minute are out of print

                    Uncle Harry sold his last silk stocking

            Claire quit interpretive dancing school

                    Buba sits a wrinkled monument in Old

                          Ladies Home blinking at new babies

last time I saw you was the hospital

            pale skull protruding under ashen skin

                    blue veined unconscious girl

                          in an oxygen tent

            the war in Spain has ended long ago

                          Aunt Rose