The New Criterion

The shabby, dishonored, unnamed ghost
who haunted my parents’ dream life like a guest

must have been, I realized thirty years late,
my father’s alcoholic father, who, light

on his feet, jitterbugged through our Pittsburgh childhood
with debts, girlfriends, his leathery moods—

a figure beyond our suburban world.
When his car roared up, my mother’s lips curled

downward, not that we cared, glad for his hoarse
attentions, his dark growl-laugh, the source,

I now know, of my father’s apish guffaws.
Why didn’t we recognize his flaws,

the headaches that kept him in bed, weekend mornings,
his lack of a job? There must have been other warnings,

and yet we were too young for the secrets slurred
in every sentence, almost every word.

Only once, I recall, did we visit him.

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