Dealt relations

Were seven or eight birthed after a transatlantic honeymoon

In a ruminant flat in lower Manhattan,

Following the third-class berthing

From that country with a hyphenated name?

Who was that dead infant born in 1878?

Was he Sam, so a later son

Could also stand as Sam?

I will raise you one child,

Said the host while slurping tomato sauce

Off the dinner bird

Harry!

Who counted the home games,

Attending only twofers —

His niece gave his name to her youngest son,

Don’t you know?

I will raise you one, said the rheumy cousin,

Puckered lips slipping from the zested cantaloupe.

Rae left us at eleven — influenza —

The only child smiling and braided in those early pictures.

Two more, said the host’s wife.

Old Jack rose through bank ranks,

A Yankee Doodler born in nineteen hundred naught, on the Fourth of July.

And Joe, remember Joey, who suffered a fall, freshman year on Morningside Heights.

Our count now pending,

We waited for Sanka cawfee

And started citing

Those cousins of that grandfather

Who lived in a large shack by a trickle in a Bronx pasture.