1991: A List of Demands
Fourteen yellowjackets scouring the weeping,
cracked face of a crabapple.
A blood-heavy sun
pitched low above an outstretched palm.
The moment when the boy's dampsilk hair
and the braille of sand on bare legs
are one thing.
Light: a six foot scrim
of white, the hour pushing
through the dark room.
Two colors from a newly sodded lawn,
a torn-open chest releasing
bluejays and nightcrawlers.
The exact odor a sun-baked
horseshoe crab releases
when turned over with a driftwood stick.
My father's face like an obol
and two months remaining.
Wild cells shadowing the backlit
silhouette of his brain,
a fin breaching green water.
A few hundred days
soaked in gasoline, tented on timber,
set alight.
One warm gust, more caress than air,
as year passes from time to memory to ash.
An excision of all these things.
Originally published in Bellingham Review
