A poem of quiet power and beauty, Dalton Day’s “The Last Time My Father Sees Me” strikes a rare balance between honest emotion and fresh, surreal imagery.
—
The Last Time My Father Sees Me
We are in a parking lot.
There is one car, and we both know
we aren’t leaving together.
He takes his shoulders back from me.
I will never earn them.
The engine snarls, ready to let
the blood pour, that strangled river
of resemblance.
He is holding my name hostage.
He says, I’ll talk to you soon, boy.
I suspend his disbelief
between my arms, a poisoned hawk.
He is looking in the rearview mirror
watching himself leave me.
I am wearing my mother’s dress,
heading towards my own
baptism.
***
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Photo by pauline praline /Flickr
I love the immediacy of the present tense in this poem. Still wrestling with that “poisoned hawk”–love the image, but struggling to parse it.
Beautiful! Thank you for sharing this with all of us.