My Father, His Story
Campobasso, Italy, 1937
Spires of San Pietro slice
the noon sun in the alley
where two small boys
hide from the chores
of parents and priests.
Toes in the dust, knees
touching, they are just feet
away from where black shirts
will march in the square
a few years later. A few more
and they will wait on the corner
to sell their labor by the day
for too little
given how much it costs them.
So they pack bags
and a handful of earth,
and cross different seas
for other lives.
But that afternoon
in gold light flecked with salt
from the Adriatic,
each pulls a crust
from his pocket
and they press them together,
the olive oil
on one
anointing the other.
First appeared in Lily Poetry Review, Summer 2022
