I’m punching fistfuls of flathead and smoked salmon hors d'oeuvres
into my mouth when he comes up. I hadn’t had anything since noon,
and even that was just a Coke from the subway vending machine,
four months expired. He smells like evaporated puddles and his face is
soft and kind with crows feet and snow-spat hair, he looks so much like
my father, he could be my father
except that he’s white. Another time, a couple pressed me to
forgive my family, they said all the best art draws from love, not anger
but I barely heard them over the Frank Ocean song
the venue kept playing while dizzying ropes of neon light spun
around like wasps. I didn’t know which song it was, but I knew it
was Frank Ocean by the way it made you feel sad
and horny and smart all at the same time. I was trying to hear the
lyrics so I could Google them when I got home. So I could drop it
into the abyss of a playlist and never listen to it again.
The wife touched my shoulder and said I understand
your trauma, but the strongest writers move on. I wanted
to say that I don’t
hate my father. I wanted to say that my poems weren’t
about anger or trauma, but about how I loved my family
anyway. But I didn’t. Useless as telling a child to stop
crying,
the song was too loud for anyone to hear me, for anyone to hear
anything else at all, and my mouth was already hardening in cow fat
and my teeth were shining with their proud new
plaque. And the whole train ride home, I wondered if I should write a
love poem to my mother or my brother. I made a note of it in an app
I’d never open again, until a moment just like this, then typed
But at your best, you are love into Safari. I found it wasn’t a Frank
song, but his cover of Aaliyah’s. When I got into bed, while
my mum was still cleaning plates, and my father
miles away, working so I could still get into a bed like this and write
about it, I switched off all the lights, save the blue of my laptop, and
listened to Frank, his silver falsetto so clear
I could see right through it,
so sharp I could use it to cut.