memory

I moved into the haunted house
and gutted it to the bones. I wasn’t alone then,

and worked there as a team. 
We evicted squirrels from their vast nutshell nest,

filled dumpsters with fifty years of trash.

Walking into the smell of old wounds, something about my grandmother’s
bedroom always kept me from there—the perfume
once animal golden now rancid & dark as whiskey. Lace-
medallioned, doilies marking time turned to loss

After your father gets lost for the third time,
      you get angry because he won’t answer his phone.
Part of me wants him to stay lost. God, what has stolen my generosity? 

i.m. Greg Greger (1923–2015)

I. West of Chekhov

A month since Father died. Back in our old house, 
sisters, where were we? Desert of childhood, 
      great preserver, 

for you we opened another closet.
Father the farm boy––what didn’t he save?
      There his Army jacket