Читать книгу Forgiveness Parade - Jeffrey McDaniel - Страница 13

BROKEN TOY CLUB

The years begin to show more of his forehead,

where the creases deepen into wrinkles,

and with his three packs a day, a cough

like a goat being skinned alive, it won’t be long

before I have to pick up the phone and make

arrangements. There’s so much to say,

but as he rattles the ice in his Bombay

and tonic, the only words that fit in my throat

are designed to hurt. With each sip, his eyes

brighten until they shine like flashlights

onto our past. As a child, he held me on his lap,

planted words in my ears that later bloomed

in my mouth. Then the seeds stopped,

and I blamed myself, and when that failed,

I blamed him, performed a nightly Sun dance

with my tongue. Daaad became a bell I rang

to remind him to be ashamed for the skyscraper

of dishes in the sink, the banana stains

on the ceiling, the weeks of dog turd in the yard,

while his wife perfected her script of white

wine and downers. Now, half-cocked,

in the same bar she used to wobble out of

like a loose hood ornament, he wants to lay

twenty-five years of dirty socks on the counter.

I could apologize for the seasons of carving

words into weapons and lining him up

for target practice, say that’s kerosene

under the bridge. You did your best.

But the mercenaries I hired to obliterate

my feelings return, with venom

on their breath, and I launch a fuck you,

for old time’s sake, at the bull’s-eye on his chest.