At her Junior High School graduation,
she sings alone
in front of the lot of us–
her voice soprano, surprising,
almost a woman’s. It is
the Our Father in French,
the new language
making her strange, out there,
fully fledged and
ready for anything. Sitting
together — her separated
mother and father — we can
hear the racket of traffic
shaking the main streets
of Jersey City as she [...]