26.12.05


THE LONGER FARTHER

The poem that got him into heaven
had apologies, to Whitman I think.
It spoke of a desert watering hole
all God's creatures, crying
the same way, a manzanita bush.
He must have eye watered while he wrote it
laughed when it was published in the local rag.
He must have laughed. Not loved either
but published finally. His life story
on the front page, with apologies:
Lili Marlene, the frozen toes of Aleutia,
the family part of mining.
Part one concludes.

II

Here is the day he was discharged
honorably from eight years of his life,
a wallet sized picture of a road grader in microfiche.

III

This is the time he leapt
like the elk over the Impala at Tonto,
my body waiting below in the gully for transport
between my sister's big breasts under
a Catholic style shirt front, she held me in c-spine.
Those were good times: a father saving a daughter,
a sister to lean on, a hospital to go to.

IV

Back over there he kept the nuts and bolts.
Jar lids screwed to the bottoms of cupboards,
nailed the latch back into place on the back door
broken from the banging.
He fixed the washer with his specs
perched low on his nose,
his eyes peeking over them and shining.

V

Right there above his long celtic brow
was a hole too small to hold a bullet
but it was a bull's eye and in his casket
I noticed it still as large as ever.
The snapshot of his dead body is in the album.

VI

She came for a spell to sit at the dinner table
tell stories with certain embellishments.
His mother had an ax to grind:
grandpa's mistress out in the valley,
some other children named the Driggers, distant cousins.
How mean grandma got over that.
How she hit with a crutch.
It is strange how long one can remember, how details
hidden come to the forefront in Riyadh,
long distance sisterhood and her swollen ankles
aching from the flight. It matters because I never knew.

VII

"Just a piece of metal, a broken one now
but you are okay, you are okay." Driving isn't
always easy on Laundry Hill but you are okay.
The new brougham wholly dented fender to rear.
It was all a daughter ever wanted to hear,
caught me a little off guard. Mom advised:

You've got to tell your father, not me.
It'll be good for the both of you.

I think it was our only conversation
because he saved up the rest of his talk
for that poem, to get him into heaven,
the only time he ever mentioned the word God, in there.
A certain kind of self confidence you get from fighting in a war.

VIII

We were in the lumber yard,
I was holding a grape Nehi,
Red was adding up the total,
two by fours and four by fours.
We tooled around town like that for a couple years
when he was sober, preparing to die.
Just a pause he was taking between drinks,
about five years of dry wall and fixing the electric,
balancing on ladders, picking stucco out of my eye.
He'd take a hit of oxygen between corners.
Sometimes I held a hammer or a jar of nails
taken from the washroom. Someone changed my name
to Lolita, showed me Last Tango in Paris,
a funny kind of thing to do to a kid.
My father decided to drink himself to death
instead of shoot the bastard
and he did. May 23 to May 23
but they got it backwards at the printers:

b.1983 - d.1913

I've got it here in his mother's jewelry box,
absolute proof. I look at it sometimes
and think about the wars and sexual exploitation.

IX
His poem is somewhere else,
yellowed;
out of date;
with apologies.
Yet I keep writing it longer, farther.


*Sorry no time to correct the band of pink on the edge of the old photo...or no will to. Some things just don't matter to Pig Pen.

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