In the still of night
old fears emerge.
Those closest relatives
you’d found barely
bearable, cornucopias
of family dystopia
spilling into
“amusing anecdotes”
decades later
like a much-thumbed
rosary, or litany
of the dead.
Old vexations,
tics and mannerisms,
wincing at the pinch
of the drunk uncle
(so handsome!—but
died young),
stooping to avoid
the hacking cough
soon to propel
your Hungarian grandfather
to his grave.
Those years!
Pride redacts the grave
long heartbreak of loving
the one more than
he’d loved you,
who’d favored your
sister, and not you
who at twelve rolled
your eyes, such
boredom!—jaws
wrenched in yawns
at Thanksgiving
twinge of nausea
clammy-white turkey
carcass and skin, stink
of eviscerated gut
and in the “gravy boat”
coarse curdles of
grease. Pope’s nose,
giblets and innards,
“wishbone” carefully
removed from the ravaged
skeleton and perched atop
the fridge to dry,
forgotten and forlorn
until rediscovered
in December, brittle
and easily broken—
Make a wish, Joyce!—but
what could you have
possibly wished, so young?
To be older?
To be out of there?
To be—where?
Stunned now to recall
how all at that table
are gone now, mere
ectoplasm in a dim
region of the brain.
How heedless you’d loved
them after all, as
they’d loved who-
ever it was, was you.
Joyce Carol Oates
October 31, 2022