39
looking back, my dreams were full of prisons
by Jonathan Moore
after dionne brand
house hush
here the ribbit-ribbit-throat of my father.
i am standing in the doorway monitoring for signs of
suffocation or foul play
i spend most nights of my 13th year warding off sudden
death with coughs and heavy footsteps.
before this nocturnal turn,
the ten years in which night brings my father, very much alive,
to me in my sleep. he is snoring 20 feet away but here
he cannot come home
because smoke stole him
or he stole some smokes or
broke into time and shoplifted 1998,
curses its name and all that is to come,
sticks a crack pipe
in it’s mouth,
lights a match, laughs revenge
into existence and kicks hard, harder than habit, explodes
1998 into shards of rock/breath and word,
now return be my reverie. 1998 my favorite year. the gall of
future ghosts a lullaby. me three years old. me no scared to look
daddy in the eyes. me smell-food-frying/can eat catfish without every bite blowing smoke in my face/me, escaping backwards/crawling out his hands and into
now, no longer a hush of 13 but a loud hole of 21. still
washing spoons twice, afraid of trace elements of trauma.
how forgiveness is a diet. how i’m never hungry.
now hush. i don’t have to be fleshy revenge.
i don’t have to be tight tendons,
i touch my throat and it is no longer tunnel.
the great plains of detroit fall out of my mouth and i take a
road trip to 1998 in my daddy’s camry, mama in the
passenger seat and she laughs