Sure, I hid all my saints in the hardwood.
Holy cards slipped under the loose ones like that.
And when George and Sal would pluck the fluff from a Q-tip
to jimmy the lock, it was their room too,
but it was my dad's furniture.
They'd say, I'm going to wring your neck Mr,
like mom did before they burst in
to pelt me with walnuts, sometimes with fists.
And I just sit there like some sack of potatoes
on the edge of the bed.
Those years, my dad was always napping or flinging
all his hard won dough on the track.
I heard uncle Freddie say that.
And I couldn't help but imagine aluminum hoof
after aluminum hoof glinting like the jagged tops
of soup cans in the sun, kneading
little moons of dirt and dough.
He was trying to win back our car.
I was fighting to stay still for them,
but my big toe kept tapping, that plank
hollering inside my own head.
Dominic, Mary, Tony, Francis, Monica, Jude.
I'd run clean through the whole roster.
I might have let out a George, George, or Sal,
If they got that gnarled wooden spoon involved.
But no, I never said stop praying.
Here's my toe, my undone sock, the gloss on the wood,
then the actual wood.
Now the laminate and the prayer poem, then the Saint.
Not too far for a boy's plea to travel.
But if they heard me, they never did help now, did they?