Fred Pollack

The Bond

But why, I asked, do you go home

at all? You know what will happen,

what they’ve become … She sighed, 

aware of my insensitivity

to family; I realized

I’d answered my own question

by using the word “home.” Describe it to me,

I begged, I want to imagine it.

She had on her phone

a picture of the dinner before the disaster.

There was the niece with some brains

cynicism was eating. 

The grinning druggy brother. The sick aunt,

the mother playing seven roles

at once, least satisfied with cook. Shelves full

of things – figurines? commemorative 

plates? They somehow slid from

my mind as I looked. Curtains closed

on identical houses, curtains closed

or always open on rooms like showrooms.

The father in profile, called by something

on the television half-visible

in the next room, always on. The next

moment he mentioned he had contributed

to the defense of that kid

who shot two Black Lives Matter protesters, raised

his hands and was waved away

by sympathetic cops.

Here she paused. But I was still caught

by the half-view of the television, its one

channel; thought how I too, once,

had imagined a future

so broadly, urgently roused,

but for different reasons by different voices.