Mephista at the Blackboard

onstructs a genealogy.

Who was the mother

of Miss B., her grands?

The mother drew

posters detailing sperm

and ova, exhorted her

not to smoke and imbibe.

The grands taught her

to knit items of no utility.

(Let it be said they tried.)

The family—all too

nuclear. Mother hacking

quilts backed in black

from Father’s ties.

And the man still

alive! Metaphors

like gin colliding

with vermouth after 5.   

(O some taught biscuits,

vinegar in the greens. 

Some wrote letters entirely

about the weather

truly relating cosmologies.)

Mephista, knock erasers

together on red bricks. 

My brat & tabula rasa,

your lineage graffiti-

writ.  Aren’t you glad

to be adopted, glad

to opt out

of that cussed parentage?