They Were 2nd Draft
Our Local Truths
I'm said to be carrying the blood of Napoleon
From way back when he sailed the Atlantic;
He and his boat full of slaves were en route
From nowhere specific on the whole African continent.
While visiting the Miramachi this kingdom
Killer and empire builder added an amorous victory,
So says my Grandmother from my mother’s
Kitchen table, impatient for the summer rain
To end and let her outside again to smoke.
Mom has said “not in my house!”
Since there was a house she could claim.
There is nothing but belief in the words
And a desire to return to plastic lawn chairs
attending the more aged face, absurdly
Assured in a local truth of generations
That never traveled back across the ocean
To where his Sicilian bones are kept.
Words that never touched the shores of France
To provoke a fact-fiction debate, never reached a tug
At his big hardwood-scroll tomb that draws
In tourist after tourist at the Hotel des Invalides.
I am quite happy to be great-great-grand bastard
Of some insecurity issue personified.
That's why I enjoy my dubious genealogy,
I’d rather descend from the imagination
Of an impossible happening than
From a warlord of long centuries past.
As for my biological grandfather, I do as
I please with him, as she does with Bonaparte
To fill the awkward silence of his absence.
I will see his keen nose upturned asleep
Between Al-Andalus’s groves and red stones
As Republican Spain’s top spy and last hope,
As a horseman who rode from Ulan-Bataar
To Samarkand in less than a week, full
Of good news, medicines, and life-giving know-how.
He laid low Bobby Fischer
In fifteen moves and bought
Him a spoon to gnash his teeth on.
At ten foot two, with a soul to
Match, he wept for felling
A millennial redwood in one blow.
He sailed the Atlantic in a boat made of reeds,
Gave Beckett pointers. In old age
Dropped his cane and the weight of decades
Without a wasted moment to dance a jig
To Francophone river songs playing in his mind
Atop crumbling sections of the Berlin Wall,
As Germans from east and west jubilated.
He was a limitless number of unbelievable
Things that Constrained and enabled
Him to being my grandfather,
He was--
I'm said to be carrying the blood of Napoleon
From way back when he sailed the Atlantic;
He and his boat full of slaves were en route
From nowhere specific on the whole African continent.
While visiting the Miramachi this kingdom
Killer and empire builder added an amorous victory,
So says my Grandmother from my mother’s
Kitchen table, impatient for the summer rain
To end and let her outside again to smoke.
Mom has said “not in my house!”
Since there was a house she could claim.
There is nothing but belief in the words
And a desire to return to plastic lawn chairs
attending the more aged face, absurdly
Assured in a local truth of generations
That never traveled back across the ocean
To where his Sicilian bones are kept.
Words that never touched the shores of France
To provoke a fact-fiction debate, never reached a tug
At his big hardwood-scroll tomb that draws
In tourist after tourist at the Hotel des Invalides.
I am quite happy to be great-great-grand bastard
Of some insecurity issue personified.
That's why I enjoy my dubious genealogy,
I’d rather descend from the imagination
Of an impossible happening than
From a warlord of long centuries past.
As for my biological grandfather, I do as
I please with him, as she does with Bonaparte
To fill the awkward silence of his absence.
I will see his keen nose upturned asleep
Between Al-Andalus’s groves and red stones
As Republican Spain’s top spy and last hope,
As a horseman who rode from Ulan-Bataar
To Samarkand in less than a week, full
Of good news, medicines, and life-giving know-how.
He laid low Bobby Fischer
In fifteen moves and bought
Him a spoon to gnash his teeth on.
At ten foot two, with a soul to
Match, he wept for felling
A millennial redwood in one blow.
He sailed the Atlantic in a boat made of reeds,
Gave Beckett pointers. In old age
Dropped his cane and the weight of decades
Without a wasted moment to dance a jig
To Francophone river songs playing in his mind
Atop crumbling sections of the Berlin Wall,
As Germans from east and west jubilated.
He was a limitless number of unbelievable
Things that Constrained and enabled
Him to being my grandfather,
He was--