In the Year of My Grandfather

There were pails

in the kitchen.

There were access holes.

There was a strange scratching

In the attic above

my bedroom. When my father

came in with his ladder,

I couldn’t tell

him about the hand

in my lap and the lap

that drew my hand into it. That summer

my father pulled

a nest out of the eaves, and I lay

in bed each night

wondering when

they would come for me: the rabid

family chewing through

the walls, the ceiling,

moving above me

on pointed toes.

They would bite my face

and hands, gnaw

my fingers at the joints,

and I would be shot

nineteen times below

the stomach and vomit

blood. I would take

the needle every week,

that would touch my spine.

The mother squirrel

returned from foraging

and found the nest broken, the babies

gone. She heard their distant

bird-like squeaks, then stood

on the roof, on two hind

feet, her lips pulled

back, her teeth



exposed, like my mother

who stopped her car

on West Walnut Street and said,

“Don’t tell me this. No.”