Remembering My Childhood While Wearing a Stovepipe Hat

Dad, shaving his face off in the mirror,

I couldn’t reach him, not even his reflection.
He told me he was in love with lobsters

and you know how far down they go.

By then, mom had passed.

She’d contracted terminal forsythia.

She was planted by the remains

of the public gallows we used as a swing-set

back when the twins were still young.

Oh when the twins were young, a thousand

tortured tongues ago!

My memory at this point fails me

like some guy making toast in his underwear

on a hot plate in a Motel 6.

But I’m sure, given what you know already

about life, you can feel in the blanks:

a. Tumbleweed

b. Malamute

c. Carbuncle or Capicola
d. All of the above