04-17-2013, 04:50 PM
The Visit
She comes to me on Fridays
with her J. C. Penneys’ clothes;
her rack-bought plaid skirt,
her frilly collared blouse. She knows
but has to ask
about Love. It is an “interview”
and I am in my sweat-stained
undershirt reclined too far
to lumber forward and offer
tea, or coffee or dessert
or pretend to be polite;
to hide my fear and shame
of the carpet, frayed and bare
or my grimey unwashed hair
or my socks, worn smooth
and filled with holes. She
wants to know of Love.
What can I say?
Should I talk about deserted
alleyways down on Genung street
where the unkept trash
has spilled and clogs the drains
and oily crack-smoke smears the window panes,
where every shout is a banging echo
of my screen door; banging hingeless?
What can I say? Does she want
to know of young girls and their ways
in those back alleyways with their
fingernails chewed bloody
and their stockings full of holes.
She knows
of greasy sheets in hotel rooms
where the lamps don’t work
and someone stole the picture
frames, where you pay
forty bucks an hour for a broken
mattress and brown stained
toilet seat. She wants to know
of Love, and how it passes days
in those back alleyways,
and how she finds the veins -
those used and punctured veins -
so she can document my pained
face on that rigid clipboard
that she carries, she wants
to know of Love
but I haven’t seen
my daughter
in more than twenty days.
She comes to me on Fridays
with her J. C. Penneys’ clothes;
her rack-bought plaid skirt,
her frilly collared blouse. She knows
but has to ask
about Love. It is an “interview”
and I am in my sweat-stained
undershirt reclined too far
to lumber forward and offer
tea, or coffee or dessert
or pretend to be polite;
to hide my fear and shame
of the carpet, frayed and bare
or my grimey unwashed hair
or my socks, worn smooth
and filled with holes. She
wants to know of Love.
What can I say?
Should I talk about deserted
alleyways down on Genung street
where the unkept trash
has spilled and clogs the drains
and oily crack-smoke smears the window panes,
where every shout is a banging echo
of my screen door; banging hingeless?
What can I say? Does she want
to know of young girls and their ways
in those back alleyways with their
fingernails chewed bloody
and their stockings full of holes.
She knows
of greasy sheets in hotel rooms
where the lamps don’t work
and someone stole the picture
frames, where you pay
forty bucks an hour for a broken
mattress and brown stained
toilet seat. She wants to know
of Love, and how it passes days
in those back alleyways,
and how she finds the veins -
those used and punctured veins -
so she can document my pained
face on that rigid clipboard
that she carries, she wants
to know of Love
but I haven’t seen
my daughter
in more than twenty days.