My Father for the First Time
I laid my hand beside his
hand. Innate commonalities:
square fingers animating
long freckled palms – an ineffable hand-ness so
clearly my inheritance. My sense, at last, of we:
my hand lay beside his hand.
It was lunch rush at the Pizza Hut and he
caught my mother up on irresponsibilities
unregretted, the invigoration
of foreign oceans. Unnoticed, my hand lay
— a tease! – beside my plate. Unnoticed, it
crept beside his hand.
My mother’s fingers, soft-flanged,
drummed while he contrived analogies for
rude redemption.
Her eyes narrowed as, in parallel, my hand
attested a new commonality.
I placed my hand beside his hand.
Within my grasp: bland legitimation.
* * * * *
Death, Second Person
When my father died I realized
I was now in control of his narrative.
Death does that. You follow, you agonize
and then – surprise! – it’s you, bite-sized,
calculating losses. Resistance neutralized
when my father died. I recognized
our mutual refusal to amortize slights,
the way we let them accrue fictive force.
Life does that. You follow, captive.
You ply the oars, fair hopes visualized, until,
blindsided, you accept another’s narrative.
When my father died, I was chastised.
He practiced flamboyant grudges, drive-by
destruction. And yet I imagined he’d forgive.
Death can do that. You forget, you reconcile.
But he employed death as criticism, denying
me an absolving narrative.
When I heard he’d died, I raged.
Now I begin my revision.
* * * * *
Summer Wind Up
When the winds shift south from Temperance,
we catch the scent of the chicken plant as we
sit at opposite ends of the couch.
Bad smells stretch untemporized into crowing
rants and cutting glances when the wind
shifts south from Temperance.
Love becomes a clocking-in, habitual, commonplace.
Third shift begins at the chicken plant.
We stare from our ends of the couch.
Unbidden, a flicker of revulsion, and the
desperate urge to flee a trap
when winds shift south from Temperance.
It’s changing time in Temperance.
Simmering vats are tipped and broth decanted.
We cluck with disgust from our ends of the couch.
Dissolution reeks of impermanence.
A stanky blow, a cage emptied and aslant.
The winds blow south from Temperance.
We brood like hens from our ends of the couch.
* * * * *
The Tempest
Since my father died, I’ve co-opted his ball
cap and rough jean jacket.
I feel my maleness. I feel his maleness.
Always, that man like a harpoon, rope
trailing. The key was his stiff legs splitting
the difference or perhaps that was my mother.
In any case, he split.
I made a difference.
Growing like a named tempest. Chippy
he would have called me, a sailor’s
term, and prodigy and accident. I
had many accidents before my father
died, chip off an old Bland. The best
news is that I am alive and he can be
cast away now, harpooned untruth —
or truth: I, too, will die in June,
drowning in the puddle of my own
tragedy. A stiffy like he was.