Using the unassuming structure of the prose poem, Jim Churchill-Dicks presents a disturbing, emotionally-charged moment between father and son.
Damnation By Firelight
After roasting marshmallows, the sticky sweet on my sons’ fingers, my father stares into the coals, starts
talking about his mother, my grandmother, my sons’ great-grandmother. He tells of how she fought her
death to the end, even under the morphine drip. Nonverbal tantrums on her bed.
She must have been staring at the approaching gates of Hell,
he says, in front of my children. His new wife nods solemnly in agreement, though she is too new to have
ever met my grandmother. She offers a platitude….something about how horrible my grandmother was,
something supportive to my father, but I cannot hear it at all…no matter how still I try to stay, no matter how
still my sons try to stay. The blood is firing in my ears, pounding like the hooves of an apocalypse that
doesn’t come, the words that I would say to explain the tantrums on my grandmother’s bed, responding to
the whispers above her head,
Don’t call him. Don’t tell Jimmy she is dying.
***
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About Jim Churchill-Dicks
Jim Churchill-Dicks received his M.F.A. in Creative Writing at Goddard College in January of 2005, and now teaches both High School and College Level English Literature and Writing in Central Oregon. His work has appeared in The Other Journal, Fire Magazine, Vain Magazine, Press 1 Quarterly and others. He is also the founder and editor of Torches n’ Pitchforks, a teen online literary journal entering its sixth year of existence.
Powerful.
Thanks for sharing this with us.
C.