| The Weekend
He Died My father died. Heart
failure. My father by choice.
Choice father. And a tree fell on my parked car.
The tree could have caused any death, any
destruction. It could have been a child, the
intolerable
lick-luck, fate, Chinese puzzles, inscrutability,
intolerable pain. Inscrutable, racist, a canard--
Peking Duck. Yes, let's eat. First the skin
baked into translucency, the remnant fat
smearing,
closing over. Then the flesh, elusive in its
reminders,
its slow, reflexive pleasures. Then broth made
from
what is left. Funeral meats, East and West.
Jingle words
like coins, the change, or covering
for dead eyes. Fingers fiddle. Don't pick.
How many times have I told you not to?
Don't pick. But can choose. Cannot choose
the first father, the birth father who killed
himself.
Did not choose the second, even prayed.
Cannot choose which death. It could have been a
child.
Heads, tails. The owner-chef stands at our table,
cleaver
in hand, dicing everything, showering parts into
the wok,
showing off his skill. Good luck will come
in the year of
the monkey. Seven come eleven.
Three men can keep a secret if two of them are
dead.
Yes, but the secret is only safe when all three
are.
They are. Check the car. Though dented it starts.
Both children answer the phone. We will be
home soon. But words cleave, uncertain,
disconsolate.
They are severed but cling together.
As the children will when they go to bed;
they know he is dead. There is too much
we cannot outwit. The check, please. Have
a sugared walnut. It could have been my child.
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