aayoungi long for the way
your stubble beard felt on my little girl skin
my fingers tracing stars on your sandpaper
how safe it was
to curl up on your chest
tucked beneath your chin
as we swayed gently
in your old leather rocker
.
dozing and certain god was in heaven
.
there are days now
daddy
when i’ve come to believe
jesus called in sick for the second coming
and my fingers running through
blades of grass on your grave
would do
this poem
just placed its fingers
to delicate collar bone
and looked at you in such a way
that only a woman who knows
her daddy was a well deposed king
may do
silently saying
were he not my father
i could love you
he didn’t know
i could hear him praying
keeping quiet
me
a church mouse weeping
as i listened to him promise
god and my dead father
he would always love
and take care of me
how fortunate i am
to have my own saint
i wouldn’t call it an altar
it’s less official
merely a shelf of irreplaceable things
two garnets
the twins’ birth stones
a statue sculpted
by a local artist named mckeown
of me
holding the boys
right after they were born
a silver piece from my brother
a two dollar bill from my grandfather
memaw’s watch and engagement ring
a rosary i bought when i was 10 from a thrift store because it spoke to me
and a small framed photograph
of my mother and father
taken after a late night of playing rook
with friends
him standing behind her
when they were in love
my father eyes are full of whiskey
my mother sober as a baptist judge
and you can tell by the way
she cradles his hands
around her waist
that she is tired
and keenly aware
all things are fleeting
it wasn’t until this day i noticed
they are posed
by the back door of our long ago little house
in the picture
as if they are leaving
my father fred wore a sheepskin coat
with leather buttons adorning it
he had a pipe in his teeth
lucky strikes in his pocket
and a cowboy hat curled at the brim
he smelled like black suede cologne
and ginseng root
or musk if he’d been deer hunting
he carried a long bow slung over his shoulder
a knife and a zippo lighter in his pocket
i would scurry along in the woods behind him
my long brown hairs trailing through
the limbs
being a southern man
who had lost hope is what killed him
he’s thirty years gone now
mama still has his coleman lanterns
and i’ve wandered off too far in the trees
seeking the scent of him
there is an old reel to reel memory
burned onto my psyche’s screen
of my fallen god
the father
throwing a planet sized
console television set out the front door
off the porch
and into the yard
in a fit of rage
eventually replaced by a larger zenith console tv
to erase the damage done
the scene horrified me for years
as his vengeance that night
could not be contained
by the red brick of the house
but as i bashed a $3oo cell phone
with a hammer
into the floor of a deserving verizon store
a warming contentment wrapped it’s arms around me
i realized i truly am my father’s daughter
and i loved him all the more for
the genetic ability
to shatter minds and electronics
i remember my father
alcoholic bellied
eating crackers stirred into milk
or peanut butter folded into syrup
so there would be enough food
for the children
how he did everything
but
exactly what he should have done
to take care of us
until
he suffered an earthquake of the mind
then died
leaving me forever writing personal ads
single white non smoking female seeks highly damaged male smoker to save
from oblivion
and i think of you on that rose stucco floor
vodka content
when you should be building
jazz cathedrals along the nile
i remember my half sister crying
and my whole father triumphant
her kittens dug into the ground
mercilessly shot in the back of the head
and i think of that last bottle of whiskey
and the aunt’s pills, you sorry motherfucker
now it’s you in the hole
the only difference being…
you deserve to be dead
i didn’t remember
the place
it held no special
fascination
in fact
upon stopping
i concluded it presented with
the patina of a general store
that hasn’t been patronized
regularly
since the civil war
a defunct garage
whose oil slicks
and greasy fingerprints
never quite faded
the filling station still attached
vestigial limbs
and all i need of the world
is a damned ginger ale
the olfactory sense
indeed smell
is most closely tied
and evocative of
long forgotten memories
upon crossing the ruin’s threshold
this dynamic enveloped me
time faded
to a sepia and cream
1979
this is the autumn
of my second year on earth
yes two
because that’s how many fingers
i’m told to hold up
i am in his left arm
too little to walk here
his
black suede cologne
and blue shirt i cling to
candy cigarettes, circus peanuts,
loose tobacco, boston baked beans,
royal crown cola,
and ring pops
observed for sale
he bought me a much wanted moon pie
the color flooded over
back to now
and my cheeks are wet
but how good it was
to see him
to be carried again
pulaski potentate
bootlegger
cultivator
bean counter
seed spreader
castle painter
son of a
southern
renaissance artist king
who wore suits during the depression
and died for his penchant
for other men’s wives
your paterfamilias
your model of manhood
shot dead when you were only three
over 1943 chaos theories
yet he was still your roadmap
to the waiting world
little indian boy
you grew to be
stunning
a brilliant man born in a place
where it was not fashionable to be so
magnetic
a man electric
deliberately reckless
driving a chevy
california king size
cassanova
listening to johnny cash
wandering
gypsy eyes
white lightning charisma
how you swaggered
neon motel monarch
an inconstant king
too beautiful to be unforgiven
how you laid waste to yourself
in a canadian mist
bourbon breath
suited the curl on your forehead
you made the driest county wet
a pardon me miss may i smile
wing tips
and lucky strikes
the prince of pomade
sinner
aspiring saint
daddy do you know
your children
have lost the mineral rights
to their own bones