Sister Kathy

down at the bottom of the sorry sisters
is a bad story figured on my initial appearance
who do you think kept track of these things?
certainly it wasn't you oh sister who-is-not-
my-true-sister, shoe-buyer memory-changer,
she-who-criticizes-my-voice at the very end
of time, the fake intellectual, the soft player
of sorry games, seeking right and left
to find the maximum social success in a
limited definition, crossed by financial success
of an aluminum nature, and keeping me
out of it all, not that it matters: in a year
or three my children's children will still
see me, and she, Sister Kathy,
will be a family story, the antic
aunt no one ever saw, afraid of having her
pockets picked, incapable of even
the mildest thought of someone else,
the subject of Aunt Diane's
jokes at her expense, and Dad's own words
about her folly. The Huntress (Aunt Diane)
pays off her own guilt debt: "She was the first;
Mother's madness was the song she learned."
whereas she, the republican in the mix,
knew Mother was mad, early on and so
avoided the crushing burden of her judgement.
And I adapt it all, the sorry sister's poor
understanding, her critique of the Lovin'
Spoonful: “so ugly”, her first
husband (gay ex-priest) running the coffeehouse,
“since you asked” her wedding song
her inability to be gracious (Jacques Brel
Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris)
wasn’t cheap enough for her (I got it
at cost at Russell's record store), she let
me know. What I hated the most: that
she took Tommy Bezzis’s painting from me
for a wedding gift; not like I had a choice.
She told mother I shouldn’t read Freud
when I was thirteen, like she could
ever really understand what it was like
in me. But I had her diary from high school,
full of prayers and boys she liked
who wouldn’t give her the time of day,
so boxed in she was and still is. So
Republican sister is right about sister Kathy:
She became Mother’s legacy child.
And I am so glad I am not her. A
great gift from the Lady,
and a result of my own choices.