Archive of Issues
Archive of Narrations
Syndic Literary Journal

I Genitori Perduti

Narrated by Charles Rammelkamp

Maryland

The dove-white gulls
on the wet lawn in Washington Square   
in the early morning fog
each a little ghost in the gloaming
Souls transmigrated maybe
from Hudson’s shrouded shores
across all the silent years—
Which one’s my maybe mafioso father   
in his so white suit and black shoes
in his real estate office Forty-second Street   
or at the front table wherever he went—
Which my dear lost mother with faded smile   
locked away from me in time—
Which my big brother Charley
selling switching-signals all his life
on the New York Central—
And which good guy brother Clem
sweating in Sing Sing’s darkest offices   
deputy-warden thirty years
watching executions in the wooden armchair   
(with leather straps and black hood)
He too gone mad with it in the end—
And which my nearest brother Harry
still kindest and dearest in a far suburb—
I see them now all turn to me at last   
gull-eyed in the white dawn
about to call to me
across the silent grass

 

Compiled/Published by LeRoy Chatfield
History of Syndic
Write Letter / Contact Publisher
© all photos/text

Archive of Issues

Archive of Narrations