Family Stuff

One night in the kitchen too stubborn for a walker
mom hit the linoleum hard.
Femur smashed but flush with adrenaline piss & vinegar
she went under the knife and jesus christ survived.

Dying to get back home she died instead in bed
at the post-op rehab place.
Sad but not so bad if you ask me to go in
your sleep at a hundred and three.

What to do next after the flowers the condolences
& the endless wake?
What to do with the house the carapace of a life of a family
of so many years of stuff?

My sisters were nearby and me four thousand miles away
as if that was an excuse.
They took what they wanted and tried their best to
sell bestow or ditch the rest.

Then I bought them out lock stock & the house and the
lingering stuff they said – it’s for you.
I’ve made the place my own but the palimpsest lingers
as palimpsests do:

The table-sized furniture stereo with a turntable
that gave up before Nixon.
Mouldering golf clubs lefty him righty for her unused
I assume since his heart attack in eighty-one.

Warped photo albums of sepia ancestors
buried (archivally) in cellar bins.
Gargoyle nick knacks and costume jewels with
broken clasps and tetanus pins.

Hollow ceramic cat with removable butt perfect for
stashing fuck knows what.
For some reason Uncle Sonny’s bowling ball an Ebonite Tornado in
its leatherette busted zipper case.

Wonder Books with yellow brittle pages still stored somehow
in a synapse of pink elephants and polka dot clowns.
Not to mention needlepoint Resurrection Jesus in a frame
which in all fairness that one stays.

Antique saws hammers screwdrivers drills that
dad got from grandpa I guess.
Dusty tools hung on pegboard pegs in the half-hearted
workshop that was always a mess.

Address book with pale blue cover dog-eared and
all my old numbers crossed out over time.
Rotary phone sturdy and beige which still works except the
ringer and that’s a crime.

Standing lamps with vintage shades turned around
just so to hide the rips and stains.
Standing coat rack three-legged wobbly but sturdy
enough for hats and scarves.

Deck of mass cards in a dresser drawer my god
mass card after mass card after mass card.
Laminated drip drip drip of generations gone hard
beneath the warranty for a missing G.E. percolator.

Philco TV heavy as an anvil with mouse bitten
wiring and tubes the size of lightbulbs.
Tiny screen curved at the sides redolent of the
age of Lucy Ricky & Army-McCarthy.

And now this family stuff lives with my stuff liberated from
tin box storage and it’s really more than enough.
But as the stand-up philosopher said your stuff is shit
and my shit is stuff:

Like the Kaypro my first computer preserved for posterity
I suppose but useless with floppy disks long lost.
Wow I wonder if the Smithsonian
is interested by now.

Slacks shirts and jackets too big and too small and
corduroy blazer with blue ink stained pocket.
Someday I’ll dye the whole thing to match the splotch and
if you believe that don’t.

Sleeves of snapshots pre-digital memories that I filed
and stowed and soon forgot.
Spreading them on the kitchen table to scrapbook
my life would be sublime but who has the time?

I could go on and will go on the inventory never complete just
slow walked to landfills and thrift shops.
The Vietnam Veterans of America leave cards in my mailbox but
I never get it together for pickup.

Instead I make sporadic offerings to the goodwill bin on
Bay Street near our old shuttered church.
Hefty bags of history fed into an aluminum maw that
clangs shut with a satisfied lurch.

Anyway the blazer stays a gift from the days when
my kid worked on the Macy’s menswear floor.
I’m no hoarder just a guy who ended up with some shit
I mean stuff than I never bargained for.

Or else I’m a sentimental fool but no stigma.
At some point all this will be somebody else’s enigma.