Picture This   Amanda Leigh Lichtenstein

 

 

Coins and shoelaces

Car keys and clouds

 

Picture the day

You returned home

 

Father's dark toenail

Fell off, finally --

 

Placed on the mantel

Microscope close

 

Old men shed layers

Of skin and then

 

Picture the day

Your father dies

 

And you do not fly

Home – not yet.

 

A perilous sort of paralyzed

Two eyes, quizzical

 

A sorrow mirror:

Ghosts sleep in the shower.

 

First you turn off the lights.

Then you remember your toes.

 

Tickets arranged, click-click.

Airports full of asthma.

 

Your father is dead,

All his music stacked

 

High in sex-closets

Stuffed with feathers.

 

You box-drag endless

To the curb – and he

 

Coughs from the porch

Clapping his hands, windless.

 

 

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