body flawless, pink carnation

boutonnières of the nipples; and your sex

stiffening in textbook time,

record time, everything about you

exemplary. Where is the one who threw up?

The one who passed out, the one who would not

speak for a week, slapped the glasses off a

small girl’s face, bloodied his head and

sank through the water? I think he is dead.

I think the ideal father would hardly

let such a man live. After all he has

daughters to protect, laying his perfect

body over their sleep all night long.

Fate

Finally I just gave up and became my father,

his greased, defeated face shining toward

anyone I looked at, his mud-brown eyes

in my face, glistening like wet ground that

things you love have fallen onto

and been lost for good. I stopped trying

not to have his bad breath,

his slumped posture of failure, his sad

sex dangling on his thigh, his stomach

swollen and empty. I gave in

to my true self, I faced the world

through his sour mash, his stained acrid

vision, I floated out on his tears.

I saw the whole world shining

with the ecstasy of his grief, and I

myself, he, I, shined,

my oiled porous cheeks glaucous

as tulips, the rich smear of the petal,

the bulb hidden in the dark soil,

stuck, impacted, sure of its rightful place.

My Father Snoring

Deep in the night, I would hear it through the wall—

my father snoring, the great, dark

clotted mucus rising in his nose and

falling, like coils of seaweed a wave

brings in and takes back. The clogged roar

filled the house. Even down in the kitchen,

in the drawers, the knives and forks hummed with that

distant throbbing. But in my room

next to theirs, it was so loud

I could feel myself inside his body,

lifted on the knotted rope of his life

and lowered again, into the narrow

dark well, its amber walls

slick around my torso, the smell of bourbon

rich as sputum. He lay like a felled

beast all night and sounded his thick

buried stoppered call, like a cry for

help. And no one ever came:

there were none of his kind around there anywhere.

The Moment

When I saw the dark Egyptian stain,

I went down into the house to find you, Mother—

past the grandfather clock, with its huge

ochre moon, past the burnt

sienna woodwork, rubbed and glazed.

I went deeper and deeper down into the

body of the house, down below the

level of the earth. It must have been

the maid’s day off, for I found you there

where I had never found you, by the wash tubs,

your hands thrust deep in soapy water,

and above your head, the blazing windows

at the surface of the ground.

You looked up from the iron sink,

a small haggard pretty woman

of 40, one week divorced.

“I’ve got my period, Mom,” I said,