My father was always shy
when he loved me in his way
breaking his back cementing
the cracked sidewalks of Brooklyn
freezing his face off on those
four am light-the-coal-stoves
winter bicycle rides through
the dark lonely streets
feeling unequal to the task
not knowing how to cross
the planetary distances between us
how to land his heart where I was
how to speak my foreign language
how to place his large hands
thick and hard like cinder blocks
over my head in blessing
how to share his skin
anoint me like Solomon
pour into my being
that which was man in him
lock me into my own bones
make me my own king
breach the cold orbits
around which we spun.

CARMINE GIORDANO was born in Brooklyn, New York and served in the New York City school system as a teacher and as an assistant principal in English. He has a master's degree in English Literature from New York University and was a recipient of a Fulbright Award for Study in Italy. He is a nationally certified psychoanalyst, a graduate of the National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis (NPAP), and a member of the National Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis (NAAP). He has spent most of his life teaching writing and literature in high schools and colleges in New York, Georgia, and now at Palm Beach State College in Florida. He lives in happy retirement with his lovely wife Ronnie in Brooklyn and in Florida.