my window, to the world
has a view of Central Park
the window, the view,
courtesy of Aunt Antonia
whose millions came from
the slaughter of lungs in Pennsylvania mines
she never saw, the lover she took
leaving it all to her, for his penitence,
and her tolerant presence in his penthouse
for forty years and a day
the day she spent at his deathbed
not even holding his hand
no one contested the will
not even his drunkard son who
squandered his fortune on five wives
and landed in a trailer in Tenafly,
some said
when Antonia made her own last laps
I was not there, but in my old place by the river
with my useless legs, the sticks of flesh and bone
that never took one step, the same legs
that earned Antonia’s silent sympathy
and divinely divested dollars
a cousin watched her passing,
pillaging her jewelry once she was gone,
snarling to her nurses the ******* would get all else
and the cat, part of the bargain
and I did, and each morning
when I look onto the park
through the maid’s invisibly clean glass
the feline is pestiferously perched
in mid frame, in park’s green summer
or white winter, reminding me
of the mines, the insolent indifference,
the passing of millions,
the dead legs that were
my first inheritance, my curled curse
that brought me a cat
and a park where
I would never walk
Jul 31, 2013
Jul 31, 2013 at 6:29 PM UTC
my window, to the world
has a view of Central Park
the window, the view,
courtesy of Aunt Antonia
whose millions came from
the slaughter of lungs in Pennsylvania mines
she never saw, the lover she took
leaving it all to her, for his penitence,
and her tolerant presence in his penthouse
for forty years and a day
the day she spent at his deathbed
not even holding his hand
no one contested the will
not even his drunkard son who
squandered his fortune on five wives
and landed in a trailer in Tenafly,
some said
when Antonia made her own last laps
I was not there, but in my old place by the river
with my useless legs, the sticks of flesh and bone
that never took one step, the same legs
that earned Antonia’s silent sympathy
and divinely divested dollars
a cousin watched her passing,
pillaging her jewelry once she was gone,
snarling to her nurses the ******* would get all else
and the cat, part of the bargain
and I did, and each morning
when I look onto the park
through the maid’s invisibly clean glass
the feline is pestiferously perched
in mid frame, in park’s green summer
or white winter, reminding me
of the mines, the insolent indifference,
the passing of millions,
the dead legs that were
my first inheritance, my curled curse
that brought me a cat
and a park where
I would never walk
Request permission to use this poem