In the Year of My Grandfather

There were pails
in the kitchen.
There were access holes.
There was a strange scratching
In the attic above
my bedroom. When my father
came in with his ladder,
I couldn’t tell
him about the hand
in my lap and the lap
that drew my hand into it. That summer

my father pulled
a nest out of the eaves, and I lay
in bed each night
wondering when
they would come for me: the rabid
family chewing through
the walls, the ceiling,
moving above me
on pointed toes.
They would bite my face
and hands, gnaw
my fingers at the joints,
and I would be shot
nineteen times below
the stomach and vomit
blood. I would take
the needle every week,
that would touch my spine.

The mother squirrel
returned from foraging
and found the nest broken, the babies
gone. She heard their distant
bird-like squeaks, then stood
on the roof, on two hind
feet, her lips pulled
back, her teeth

exposed, like my mother
who stopped her car
on West Walnut Street and said,
“Don’t tell me this. No.”