trans-parent

trans-parent
by Anthony Liccione
if I could hold you up
to a sun-strong light bulb
and see through
to the other side
of your flesh
I would,
to give me an x-ray
shot of what
really lurks
inside you,
see where your bones
would lead me,
the picture frames
flashing in your mind
you never speak of,
two marriages
that sunk in the sea
of your heart,
but your old now,
frail, with bones
soon to fray away,
yellow skin wrinkled
cigarette-smoke stained,
lips are chipped
and slapped with wine,
you say grandma kept you
in the attic, made it your
bedroom, that awful
traffic heat-choked room
I revisited years later,
the Cross creepily nailed
to the cobwebbed wall,
where a portrait of mother
mary never smiles,
her heart glowing with dust
on the dresser
a ceiling light bulb
that had a long string
pull-chain you used
from a worn sprung bed,
because
afraid to shut down the dark
not smothered in blankets,
and when the lights
went out,
the moon would bleed
outside the window,
grandfather in the basement
with his missing forefinger
he lost at the factory,
still thinking it
was attached
pointing to postures
of the ghost walls and
bottles of homemade wine,
he would go talking to himself
the lenitive shadows
that leaned against
grandma,
his wife he never
slept with, isolated
in two different bedrooms,
where she would crochet
and stitch together,
the old black magic of italy,
witches and demons
in her brew,
putting a curse
on the family name,
and I walk somewhere
relentless to who I am,
the roots that withered
in the face of the ground,
buried with bones
forgotten.