I see my father as he twists
the stuffed snake’s head over
in his hands, the one my mother
bought to keep his shaky fingers still.
Both coming unstitched, I see it in their eyes,
by the grip of another. We would laugh
because he named the green lump, Gary,
and each time we would ask, “Is that
your Gary?” Each time a little closer
to the end, but he laughs,
begins to chew right through what’s left.
I’ve lanced the first year, but
when snow blows in, cold and quiet, I see
my dying father as he rides a bicycle in bed,
not fully functional, one you pedal by
the strength of your arms while your legs
hang over the edge.
Though your brain is a crushed walnut—
deemed withered
away, father, this is the only language
I know how to use, to say
what I think you could latch onto: a stone
in a lost lake still
has its own sunrise.
When sought out, found and thrown, the stone is everything it needs to be:
an odd shape of history, all distances of
sediment that came together at once.
There it is. I’ve finally said something,
watch it whimper in the dark. Father,
your only light now chatters
from the other side of the room—
unbearably. I’ve waited for this moment
and here it is: all wobble and knees and rust
—mimics your lightchatter coming from
the other side of the room, my myth of minus.
Aaron Reeder is an MFA student of poetry at The University of New Mexico. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Pittsburgh Poetry Review, Kudzu House Quarterly, Bitter Oleander, Black Tongue Review, The Great American Literary Magazine, and others. He is the author of the forthcoming chapbook, DAWN (Orange Monkey Publishing, 2015). His chapbook, Small Flicks of Light was a finalist and honorable mention in the 2015 ELJ Mini-Collection Contest, and his work in The Great American Lit Mag was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He is the poetry editor for Blue Mesa Review and the active Secretary of the Inland Empire Literary Organization, PoetrIE.
–Art by Barbara Florczyk