Meanwhile, my sister and I
rate our father’s revenge stories by punchline.
In my favorite he uses a derrick crane
to trap a night supervisor
several stories above the factory floor,
throws the keys down an industrial drain.
There are some families who can list what matters
in the open:
say their prayers
or say they’re sorry,
but we’ve kept secrets
as if they accumulate interest,
if not the kind that pays us back,
then that pays someone else
to watch. The summer my cousin
faked her own kidnapping
was one of the only summers
we reunited in earnest,
piled our paper plates high each night
with potato salad, cocktail weenies–
gathered around the television together—
the surveillance footage playing on every channel,
the woman with our same cheekbones,
frailties, trapping herself over and over
between commercials for the county fair.