First
Visit To My Grandparents
I walk the graves to find my own
Dripping genetic sweat on clippings
of grass
Searching for their names, my
name
In Pennsylvania. From
Austria-Hungary
Past suicide row, the lawn mower
calls it, by the scrappy trees
Where he doesn’t go. Finally, I
kneel under the pines
Kissing tribute to their granite
lives, smooth and burning
In the Slovak town by Hermitage,
in Sharon
Where pig blood drained to the
Shenango River
Where Dad’s pitch-forked fish
bled in the Shenango
Deer grazing under the spent
orchard above the Shenango
Cicadas screaming
as the highway spoons the Shenango
Numb stone walls, Sharpsville
Steel, bricks
Muscarella’s Restaurant, beer and
tattooed boys
Lawns of used furniture and
tackle shop under the flag
Everyone grown old on the slag
heaps by the Shenango
Patagonia, where the Slovaks
arrived to steel mills and railroad Co.s
Patagonia, where warped boards
are scraped of paint by years
Patagonia, where unemployed weeds
dawdle on the baseball field
Patagonia, where possessions of
paycheck days are sold on lawns
With tongues of moss spewing fuck
the future
Channeling fathers’ chapped
knuckles across lips
Where slate turns to cardboard on
sodden sheds
Walking the asphalt with get-by
thoughts
I have come as an explorer
But leave having been ripped
From the old world, terrified
By the sight of my own blood
