Jo Christian
Sometimes, I stir from bed in the early morning hours,
heels of my bare feet stinging against
bone splintered floors, wood whittling my heels down
to smooth stone, frigid and on fire from the scum,
yellow street lights knocking through the blind’s ribs.
The moon is nothing more than a translucent film,
a monocle—a thin lens—ghastly and glowering,
behind the clouds. And looking down, half asleep,
at the wooden slabs, each plank a bloated beam
gleaming, I see my father’s face staring up at me.
Nose a knuckling of bone, jutting out;
Eyes two whirlpools notched in wood, raised,
yellow betwixt black. Mouthless. The longer I hold
the ghostly gaze, I make out his body, strands,
shadows, long and tied together like a rope.
His hands reach toward me in wisps of dust.
For a moment, I can feel them, two fronts of frost
laying into my own. My hands clenching my thighs
like vices, like a crow’s beak clamping down, flesh
curling out, bulging like fabric. My hands are his.
Each flanges and fraying, fiber becoming the same,
each clumsy cartilage and skin, cracking dry and
splitting—
feeling familiar; I know their crooks and curves
their crimes etched into the palms like splinters,
like liver spots, like warts and splaying knuckles.
How many of us did they break and bleed,
our spirits like a hen, it’s neck twisted off?
Staring, I too wonder whether mine will wreck and
wilt,
will it cause the same wrongs? I try to shake the face’s gaze,
my father’s grip, try to choke down the stomach bile
with a tall glass of water, but like a child, I lay awake
and watch the shadows of pacing cars, the tree limbs
and flailing leaves, all dancing across the wood
as if it were a stage. I wonder where he lingers.
How far or close this past, this vile father keeps his vigil
or whether my milk pale skin
were but a sheet and he stitched to it.