His Sunday-man mouth hid a weekday
tongue, a dialect voweled by
mis-blamed failures-and yes gin-
an afire vernacular able to fume only the
possessive or singular me, my, mine.
Ill-languaged, entirely handmade, it palled every dinner hour-panicked
every effort-with thorned consonants.
Tragic how illness and age fail to re-jaw
that maw: still a fluked fatherhood, still a thumbed verb to the soft of the throat.