Leonard Orr Family History My people hail from Macchu Picchu and Vladivostok And my great-grandmother was half coyote. She was famous for howling at the moon In the backyard, well into her eighties. Uncle Zheng, baffled and battered by political swings, Was in the end fired from his job at the spermbank. It's so hard to take up a new career, one-legged, G iven to visions, and three feet and half feet at the shoulder. Every fall when the geese formed their great Vs Mother sneaked down to the docks and ran off to sea. A congenital condition, salmon or sea turtle genes, while Father found consolation with yoga and tai chi. She returned in May in her worn yellow slickers, Reeking of fish, showing off her tattoos and scars. Please don't ask about my sister with her Hopi husband, and about my aunt's coven, my lips are sealed. It's true I haven't been all I should have been and my relatives are embarrassed when they see me. But you, with your big toe stuck in the bathtub faucet, shouldn't laugh at me at all, you shouldn't laugh at all.
Summer • Fall 2006
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