VINYL POETRY

Volume 7, February 2013

BIRDIE
James Allen HallView Contributor’s Note

Between Men

In the famous painting, God touches the man
who will become Adam—not his son, but an experiment—

or nearly touches him and the question is like an alarm
filling the fatherless space inside my mind,

What does he want with Adam’s body?

— To fill the first man’s lungs, animate him
out of the painting, so he’ll belong only to the creator,
held up as proof the father is benevolent?

—To take him into his arms and unmake him,
cure the plague of sons who will blight the field?

No god can be trusted. Not when he fathers
a man he’s destined to fail, a man he won’t call son.

*

My father’s hands are breaking open; a rash flames down,
lashing his flesh until he’s a man wrapping a pair of wounds
around my back to welcome me home.

In the shower, my father’s body cracking like sculpture,
the water burns him to howling. I wash away the dried shit,
the desiccated food, then dry him with a soft towel, careful
not to widen the gashes on his arms.

It won’t be long before I will recede, dementia doubling
the distance between us. Until I’m only the Thursday nurse
who hurts his body clean, the man he calls fatass,
holding his hands down while his face is shaved.

I hold him as instructed, my hands gripping his wrists
at right angles. At the appointed time, I will let him go.