Papa, you found me/ in your desk drawer/ in the photographs/ and wallets/ and collections of hair/ the keepsakes you kept of me/ to kill your loneliness/ yesterday we looked/ over/ at each other/ at the words I left you/ when I was little/ when you were sick/ & all the letters I wrote you/ giving my condolences/ but you were not yet dead/ then you found
Dedushka's journal/ standard Russian scripted/ his hearing aid/ an AARP insurance card/ whatever was left of a watch/ him & your mother had the same cancer/ but she died/ two lost lovers intertwined/ across the country/ the world/ draping a shawl over her shoulders/ only I never knew her/ she missed out on what was left/ of her grandchildren/ I heard her voice on the phone/ once/ twice/ she died when I was 6/ you were 51/
Papa, I am scared that you are losing me, too/
Papa, can you feel the ache of my disjointed arms/
Papa, my voice is soft/ yours is brittle/
Papa, you loved me when I was little/ now I am a ghost of your reflection/
Papa, you have turned me into a wall/ you have turned me into my
Mama/
Papa, how could you/
Papa, your belly protrudes with age/
Papa, your hair is thinning out/ it's grey,
Papa/
Papa/ Papa, I saw your name once/ on a gravestone/ in Queens
This is beautiful poem that parallels the relationship a child and a father with the relationship of said father and his father. It's elegant and powerful. The only tweak i would make would to be to either elaborate or remove the stanze : sitting in stripped pajama pants/ because I immediately thought of the Holocaust (The Boy in the Stripped Pajamas) and I'm not sure if that was the intention. Other than that this is a strong poem with a powerful ending!
ReplyDeleteIt's so nice to see you experimenting with the same form as first Marcela and then Erica did in the poem we discussed last Wed. This is exactly what poetry classes like this are supposed to encourage--that is the trying on of new artistic forms like new outfits or a new skin for a browser or app. Forms are meant to be shared and developed collectively, so it tickles me to see you doing just that.
ReplyDeleteThis poem is more focused and compact than the previous two, and it really starts to pack a punch toward the end, when you begin the anaphoric passage addressed to "papa." Here, you take on some of the fierce energy of Sylvia Plath, our greatest master of poems written to the father.
I really like the ending of this and its vacillation between ordinary and intense details. The range of details shows how important the father is to the speaker and how naturally poetry emerges from this emotional foundation.