Bald man smoking in bed,
Naked lightbulb over his head,
The shadow of his cigar 

Grandpa loved crawling
Under the skirts of his mother’s friends
As they sat on the porch

Children’s fingerprints
On a frozen window
Of a small schoolhouse.

        as he drew the silhouettes

against the vast

         machinery, suspending them,

The season of the cut and clear. The bales squared
in the distance, a hollow house, no windows or doors.
The Ns of the fence posts, perforated shadows.

There came a time when she found pleasure
in saying the word pussy, alert to see whom it shocked

Spoiler alert: Jean Stafford, in her
all-but-out-of-print masterwork

Cobbled streets have the burnished look of stone skulls
sinking like a necropolis of Ugolinos from centuries 
of bewildered tourists stumped in the Eternal City, mulling

Virginal decorations.
The pain of countless upside-down candles.

Dementia’s wheeled to the window
for the fireworks, like boneless