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Premonition On My Father’s Funeral

On the day after the shivering Jews 

weep at God. February’s wormy grass 

stomped on by their shovels, digging down past 

him, burying us both, getting us confused.

My mother’s tongue in a knot on a word

I typed at the dinner table for her.

Then my turn. I adjust my father, slur

across the bad years. No mourner here’s heard

how I wrote this tribute: three days ago

I iced the shower water to blue-lipped

and knew that he would die. It made me trip

and twist into the bath curtains. Out flowed

the little I knew in him. Only then

could my father’s fatherhood ink my pen.

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