I emptied the poor box and fed the nickels and dimes to a meter, a
           gumball dispenser, a slot,
I brought the leaded glass to an antique shop on South, and the
           pews became bonfires and block parties
with chicken dinners from the kosher butchers on the other side of
           Broad, everything set on the altar for the vets
who spend Sunday morning detoxing, chain smoking on somebody's
           front step, getting chased off,
damning their sons sonofabitching their daughters so stupefied by
           compulsory education compulsory religion compulsory
           marriage,
and missing their grandmothers, who were still taking the trolley to
           the garment factory every morning, age 67, on partial SSI,
coming home to her own row house, working miracle Campbell
           Soup dinners for two, getting weekend meats from Nunzio
           the Chicken Man on Point Breeze,
cursing whatever God kills a husband and leaves a woman a widow
           at 30 with six children a mortgage and no insurance,
married to a 32nd degree Mason who translated for Pershing, the
           only insurance salesman in history to die uninsured,
leaving me alone so I could read Les mariés de la tour Eiffel stolen
           from Temple's library in that back room with a window and
           a record player and a French dictionary,
or walk up to the University Museum, four miles each way, and to
           walk back happy,
letting me have my privacy, letting me work late into sometimes
           summer mornings,
or sleep late on Saturdays and Sundays with no bother about
           obligations,
or sleep even later that morning in June after the assassination in the
           hotel kitchen after the California primary
leaving me to mourn alone under the railroad bridge 25th and
           Washington, leaving me just a note,
Coffee on the range just turn on the gas love you Gran.