DNA by Al Ortolani

He's always been good to us
was a line my mother used
when referring to someone the family
could rely on. Her words
elevated them to an ally,
like the optometrist
who took payments for
eyeglasses, a little a month
squeezed out of my father's
teaching salary, or the owner
of the grocery store on Joplin Street
who ran an account,
paid once a month when the check
came in. It was a poor person's line,
a reference of respect to those
who didn't hold their position
like a clipboard of overdue slips,
or rustle a sheave of eviction notices.
My mother’s people were Irish,
forced from Kerry to Appalachia, then
from Kentucky to Missouri, finally,
scattering in Ancestry.com files.
The line was engrained in her DNA.
Field after field, they set
the plow-turned stones
in fences with narrow stiles.



Al Ortolani’s poetry has appeared in journals such as Rattle, Prairie Schooner, and Tar River Poetry. His newest collection, On the Chicopee Spur, will be released from New York Quarterly Books in the Spring of 2018. Ortolani is the Manuscript Editor for Woodley Press in Topeka, Kansas, and directs a memoir writing project for Vietnam veterans across Kansas in association with the Library of Congress and Humanities Kansas.