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Thirteen Ways of Looking at My Father
Erin Pringle
I
Spring began when my father shaved his head, leaving his black hair
in the bathroom trashcan. On the white wads of toilet paper: black
shards, blood (from the mole he
always cut off).
II
My father’s very blue eyes. Paul Newman eyes. My father lying on his
side on his bed.
The last time I will see him. He’s looking at me
and everything, looking at me like I’m
a painting. Paintings must be terribly sad.
III
We are driving in a truck. He has pink-iced doughnuts with
sprinkles. He’s alive.
Someone is chasing us.
IV
A boy climbs into an abandoned attic. He falls through, onto old
windows, bottles.
He limps to the highway and holds up his thumb. So many people pass
by. When
he’s finally at the doctor, his mother says to the doctor, We can’t
afford anesthetic. Tweezers. A knife. Glass. My father’s back pocked
with scars as he sits with his back to the bedroom door playing
clarinet. He taught himself.
V
I do not know which to prefer,
A father so medicated he can’t paint
Or a dead father.
VI
A picture of a little girl in a yellow-checkered dress under a
blue-jean pinafore. Her
hair is blonde and wavy. A daisy
superimposed on her face. My father behind the
camera.
VII
Oh, Father.
You hung the blackbird from the rearview mirror of the van
As a warning to other blackbirds as to what happens when
The robins are what we want under the oak tree.
VIII
I wander graveyards, as if your name should be on every stone.
IX
When you died, I tried to shut myself in your casket. But it was
already nailed shut. I didn’t even try to force the lid, but somehow
I see everything as if through a crack in
the coffin.
X
You are asleep in the back bedroom. Just sleeping. The whole dying
thing really was a mistake.
XI
My mother says, On one of the tapes he says he wants to shoot
himself. I erased the tape, she says.
But it was his voice.
XII
I remember your blue eyes as you lay there. You were alive, but they
said you died,
and I never saw you again. I saw the coffin. The
tombstone so small I must always
search for it. You must be dead.
XIII
My body is so small that as I lie against you, my head on your arm,
my toes end
before your belly button. We sleep under the filmy pages of the
photo album.
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