Adam Tavel

My Grandfather’s Light

after treatments when I’m bleeding
from plaques silvering my kneecaps
I wonder how his raw shins flaked
when he winced shucking
overalls in the basement corner
because no one can remember
how a body burned as it swam
its weightless glisten in the salt
only a foggy childhood strangeness
my aunts and mother conjure
of his ultraviolet lamp nestled
in cobwebs freakish skeletal
like a dead dream’s prototype
like a coatrack on a boy’s coffin
and the sound it made upstairs
where after dishes there was briefly
breath eight daughters held
when the floor begat its hum