The trade
My father has paper mâché legs,
Standing on footings dripping mortar,
Like the pigeon droppings on the sidewalks of our bridge,
Hardened from cement,
From falling shoes and spinning wheels.
I bring new blocks to the footing,
The shape of cigar butts stepped on.
He teaches me to lay my gloves for a wet trowel,
Talking about water and the trade:
I would need to give my back for forearms like giant squash.
I would need to catch freshly cut stone without mitts.
It’s a planter we are building, I think.
Rows of gray and dark gray,
One layer of mortar, one block, another layer of mortar...
Knocking them to plumb across,
It is the rows we are building only.
Building them up, making clean tract,
As if he would own it,
As if building were owning.
His father shows me his houses -
Brick hampers of air, and asphalt you could drive up on.
He drives by, passes and circles again.
Points to what has been added,
To the brick that has been repointed,
To the little holes in the foundation drilled to kill termites.
His legs, too, are set in the dried paste,
Casings for thick red veins and wet blisters of cement
poison.
I saw by the water, by the crushed shell beach,
That they never dry.
Page(s) 59-60
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