a kind of Irish headstone.
The “L” it made with her body
stood for labor and for loss.

Memory itself is perpendicular,
always righting what is wrong—
or attempting to. We live

and die in different planes…
How many Jobs do you have?
The joke a pun on the mercilessness

of God, for whom suffering in body
is insufficient. The spirit
like a boil must get in on the act.

After your husband was torn
from his tent and marched off
to the King of Terrors,

leaving you with two children to support,
you took yet another job at night
in the 92nd Street Y library.

By day you kept the Dominican
Fathers organized at hardly
more than minimum wage.

On your soul all week,
on your feet for eternity.
Whenever the Y discarded books,

you’d take them home.
You were the Mother Teresa
of orphaned poems.

How many times did you try to save
your rich older sister’s,
my mother’s, marriage?

You’d come down from New York
to babysit her four kids
so that she might find a reason

not to hate her handsy husband.
As soon as they had left
for Barbados or St. Croix,

I’d get you to climb up
to the top bunk in my bedroom
and then abscond with your way down.

You’d squeal and beg—
you were so afraid of heights.
Oh, Mo, short for “star of the sea,”

short for Biblical unfairness.
Your only son a shade by forty.
He barely got to live

as long as Jesus.
Neither work nor rest will set you free.
Your body, like your mother’s,

ached until the end.
Someone has taken the ladder
away from Heaven.