She’s naked and holds out her hand. My dad’s in his chair.
He pushes her. She falls, legs wide, pubic hair dark and heavy. Her breasts hang from her ribs, nipples like chocolate.
She smashes his face. He takes the coffee table to her, brings it down on her shoulders. Again and there’s blood. Again and the table goes to shards and slivers.
She doesn’t move.
Oh God, he says. I’m sorry.
She lays her hand on his face like it’s all okay.
I can barely hear her crying.
My folks’ closet is crazy with coats and clothes hung like lonely hides waiting for someone to pull them on again.
Secrets sit in the corners, up on the shelves.
My dad’s old uniform is huge. The sleeves drop over my hands. The weight of it makes me important.
The war sits in his face, the crawling around in the mud and constant shit. Guys weeks dead, bloated, skins split, their innards a meal for the ants and monkeys.
We found a pit once. Smelled like barbeque.
Something’s gone out of him.
He closes the door and stays there until morning.
Mom sits in her kitchen with her cigarettes and her coffee and her book. It is her day off and she has nothing to do, so she sits in her kitchen, quietly.
Everything smells of dust and the tar the asphalt spits up into the heat. Shirtless kids poke at it with sticks, clumsy attempts at art drawn out on concrete curbs.
I can’t move. The day is too heavy. Even the flies are slow in their circles.
I sit in the kitchen and I’m quiet. I watch Mom smoke and read her mysteries. I watch the way her hands hurt when she lifts the coffee cup, two fingers folded around the handle.
Sadness has settled in the dark skin around her eyes. She bites off chunks of smoke and waves the cloud into ribbons with her bony, baba yaga hands.
Cigarettes wrinkle her face up, pulled it down in folds and frowning pouches.
Thin, black hair hangs dull, graying in streaks.
She sighs and lights another cigarette because tomorrow she has to work but right now she sits in her kitchen with her mysteries.
I have no shoes. There are no words for my mouth. There are no words to make things not happen.
My dad’s knuckles are little stones. Blood tastes like blood. Pain is not bright.
Mom says, You’re not doing this.
Today Mom’s strong. Today she’s fierce.
The first shot takes me in the eyes. I can’t see.
Now the nose.
The chest. The belly. The eye again.
I wing a flat, jagged rock at him. It flies like a Frisbee. Bone flashes. Dad bleeds.
That’s enough of that.
He tries to push past to the bathroom.
Mom says, I told you not to.
She has a knife.
I think it’s time you left.
The living room is dark and warm. The music is soft, bluesy music the color of cigar smoke. They dance with their hips.
Her tits come out. Her head is on his bald spot. All night, I watch their secrets. Their secrets fill me up.
My poem titled Everything is Perfect came out recently on Amarillo Bay. You can find it here. http://www.amarillobay.org/contents/alton-william-l/everything-perfect.htm
Drinking again. Dad tries on an Irish brogue. It doesn’t fit.
I built that mountain there.
He pours his stories in my ears.
I dug this river, pissed in it to get the water going.
Some nights he sings. Darling Billy. Blow the Man Down.
Light hangs shadows on his face.
Sleep comes on the tail of his voice.