From the back seat
hot vinyl sticky
brother perks from his
boys’ school
where monks teach
Twain, The Holy Bible,
and he wearies of rich kids,
hair too short, wants
jeans like mine.
“He’ll have to support
a family someday,”
my father says,
“but you … .”
Only 11-years-old, I know
scrub, wipe dinner where he
leaves milk spilled,
close my ears to piano
keys’ pound, Star Trek’s
blare.
I’ve begun to count years,
fear Grandma’s legacy,
her deep eyes, letters
she writes to Ecuador,
Thailand, Mal comune,
mezzo gaudio – trouble shared
is troubled halved – but done
with school at 16
when the principal says.
She promised me rubies
– our birthstone – but they moan
at her wake how she failed
her boys, drunken husband,
and by then I’d fallen far,
cage door sprung open.