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