The day my father’s father

slugged one of the town drunks

while trying to pour him

like a measured shot

in a cab backseat for free

(on my father) — hit him

when the drunk turned

bellicose as the billy goat

escaped from the neighbor’s tether,

which chased me

round my grandmother’s house

as she napped (so she said)

on an ocean of swayback mattresses

and I hammered

the locked glass-pane storm door

with fists white with fright,

and ran the circle of grass again

on legs seven years slow

and once more before she opened

the door and the gruff

nightmare of fur

and animal anger

pushed its hoof —

a hot poker into still water —

through the glass in mirrored dismay,

then ran without reason

tired rings around the house,

and she caught me

in her arms like my father’s

father caught the day-dead drunk

he hit for cussing

Dad’s generosity

in my presence — that day

I was thinking

of the word colostomy,

new to me because

Grandpa had

had one

and told me so.