Thief Dad taught me to steal when I turned twelve. In white apron over butcher’s coat hiked-up a foot to clear the sawdust floor, pencil stub on trussing twine dangling from a buttonhole, boyhood snatched and left behind, I was hammered into a counterman. Smile, say ‘Help you ma’am?’, give her odd weight (even’s too easy to calculate) and add five percent to every sale, or the Chains will eat our lunch. Long ago I forgave his lies that made me a thief so he could buy a Jersey skiff, flash a two-inch roll, and Mondays after Schvitz visit his trull. But the customers don’t pardon me: should grandee, politician, fellow praise service I’ve rendered, building raised, once more across the counter shoppers stand empty bags in outstretched hands, Blondie, with her seven ragged kids, baggers, dailies, handy-men, discount coupons crumpled in their fists, the working or redundant poor I stole from weekly at his store, stare, point, till I turn aside, crimson, drop my eyes, and convert laudation that should shrive me into dirt. 11