Read More: A brief Q&A with Andy Fogle
Death, Burning, and Service
I thought I could see the future, but when I looked I saw the past.
—Eric Pankey
My boy not yet born to the conscious
world, I dreamt Dad died last night.
As guests hovered past for the headshake,
the mutterance, the hand on his body,
the nod, he’d open his eyes
wide, all black, murky, lolling
in the sockets. His ex-, my mother,
cradled his head, and he almost grinned.
His lids slid together, and I,
somehow, was to speechify.
In twelve years, it will be my mother to
die first, and my father to be speechless
wherever he goes for five days. I’ll speak
an above-average quantity of words
with an above-average emotional
quotient for three weeks: between her fall,
a week in the hospital while the cancer
spread and swelled her guts, pressing up
on her lungs, three hospice days back
at her place, then six more between her death,
burning, and service. The night before
she dies, starting to drink, I’ll call my dad.
He’ll sob he has to believe that she
is better off, that she of all people
does not deserve to hurt anymore.
A little later, a little drunk,
I’ll call home, and when I talk to my son,
I too will weep, because that’s what my father
will have finally taught me, and I’ll tell
my son my joy at nurses’ kindness
and his grandfather’s tears, and tell him
he has this in him too, and that There is so
much light in this world, because I’ll have to.
Epithalamium at Porrona For Priya & Fabio
With all its heart, from the depth
of its roots, an olive tree’s
adoration of the sky—
as every dawn
is the you, the you
of a mourning dove,
as any glimpse of violet
distance is the radical
stillness of cypresses— […]
Subscribers can read the full version by logging in. |
Killer Interiors
—for Jeff
I have felt my life beginning to empty,
to shut down for the night,
for the season, or for good,
and I have felt it refill,
reopen for the day.
The window I face faces
east, and the sun is all
over me, as shining
black coffee steams
cinematically
from glossy clay mugs.
Such an orderly place:
nothing crammed or tossed,
nothing fidgets or wanders.
Three-foot speakers flank the stereo:
On my shadow life, I swear that I love you.
Beercans—pricier and fewer
than years ago—stand rinsed
and in a row by the sink.
Slang like wasted, blitzed, shit-faced,
must have been invented just for us.
Such fuck-ups, what
kind of fathers
have we become?
<strong>[…]</strong></i></p>
Subscribers can read the full version by logging in. |
___________________________________
Andy Fogle is the author of Across from Now and seven chapbooks of poetry, including the forthcoming Arc & Seam: Poems of Farouk Goweda, co-translated with Walid Abdallah. His work, including a variety of nonfiction and collage, has appeared in Anomaly, Blackbird, Gargoyle, Image, Parks and Points, and Right Hand Pointing. Music at fogle.bandcamp.com. He’s from Virginia Beach and the DC area, and now lives in upstate NY.
Read More: A brief Q&A with Andy Fogle