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1933 his mother spoke in fairy tales
as they put his dad to rest at St. Blaze,
the cemetery where all the Cruz’ lay
.
1944 he killed a girl in Europe, though
she wasn’t the enemy, and in 1950 he
buried his first wife under a tract house in
Levittown, she wasn’t the enemy either
.
in ’52 a son born, a kitten without claws,
was by 1960 well-nigh crushed by
the red raging bellicosity of his father
a man is a man is a man, he’d preached, as
he made his way through life in armor plate

© 2017, poem and photo, Jamie Dedes, All rights reserved

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