Birth:
i slid out of my mother
through a slit in her abdomen;
howling and slathered in slime,
my father christened my name.
Live:
my father told me his father
and him were never close;
i told him that we would be different,
fingers crossed in case i turned out to be a liar.
Death:
on his deathbed my father slipped
quietly away to the New World;
was i mourning for the loss of a man,
or for the man i had wanted him to be?
