Tess. Lotta

Requiem for Poor Richard

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.

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