Granite City

City hospital on one hill,

city dump on the other. Heat lightning

strafed the night between them.

The hospital smokestack blinked like a boy

agape at his first car crash.

House of my parents, ambulances

sped by with three blocks to go.

My grandparents walked home arm in arm

after dinner, Allied armies falling in

with textbooks and racing forms.

The war was over, the enemy lived on.

August came, plums turned purple

in the market, but only the red ones pleased me.

My great-aunts cleared customs, bundled

with gifts and smelling of Europe.

Terraces of granite rose from the sea.

On the heights each watery quarry had a name

and a legend, atomic creatures, gangland

graves, a kid who dived and disappeared in 1959

but died in Quang Tin from a punji spike.

When we got to the quarry, our towels rolled, the police

were taking names. Someone was missing.

Would you like a bowl of cold borscht,

asked my grandmother, listening to my story.

Beet-red, sour cream swirled it out of plasma.

History begins with indignation

because it’s so hard to remember

what’s been remembered. Sarcophagus

of John Adams in the First Parish Church.

His wife and son in stone beside him.

Divers failed to find the body in the blind fathoms.

It was a girl, someone shoved her.

The father asked the city to pump it out.

Curbstones, gravestones, churches, all cut

from that hole filled with rainwater.