“Sometime during the Truman
        Administration, Sharon Olds’s
        parents tied her to a chair, and
        she is still writing about it.”
                (review in The New Criterion)

        “My father was a gentleman, and he
        expected us to be gentlemen. If we
        did not observe the niceties, he
        whopped us with his belt. He had a
        strong arm, and boy did we feel it.”
                (Prescott Sheldon Bush,

                brother to a president
                and uncle to another)

They put a roof over our heads.
Each tile was a slab of clay laid over a
thigh and bent until it dried bent,
so the edge of the roof had a broken look,
as if a lot of crockery had been
thrown down, onto the home—
a dump for heaven’s cheap earthenware.
Along the eaves, the arches in a row
were like the Colosseum entrances
where a lion might appear, or an eight-foot armored
being with the painted face