My Father’s Friends Travel from the Afterlife to Attend His Memorial

Cold pals of Kingfish, cock-eyed pool sharks, handlers

of mysterious auto parts, men who took a decade in jail

like a skinned knee, Uncles A–Z, you arrive in pairs

like beautiful old shoes no one will ever wear again.

You storage shed keepers of cash behind the case

of Nehi bottles, shades who appear, calling me, as before,

Little George—

I have let you all down. No firearms.

No town car. No here’s a quarter call Johnny Zesso.

I traded that line for a gull, a song. I survey, gussied,

over-taut, starched shirt worthy of the funeral banquet,

and wonder what you would hock for one day

of my clarity.

O Hebrew singers of Greek, Arabs

quick in French, shoplifters at Christmastime, eighth-grade

graduates with surgically altered fingerprints, thank you

for all the Santa Claus. Now my dad’s with you,

and I’m in the V.F.W. meeting room behind the bar,

as he requested, a simple service.

What must you

think of me, holding forth behind my father’s ashes,

every character a witness, every anecdote epic?

Do you shift your wings in heavenly chairs

if I hit a sour note? Mock boo-hoos when I speak

of the man that you knew better? A few dabs

to the eye with a silk kerchief?

Go someone, quickly,

fetch Little George his ringing lyre . . .