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.
read about the author | © 2005 Contrary Magazine