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Some of the Men | Michael Dickman
I had to walk around for a long time before I could see anything
The leaves
circling down the street
imitating the insides of seashells
imitating
my fingerprints
I could sense my father
sitting alone in his little white Le Car
staring off at the empty parking lot
No radio
No wind
No birds
Just some guy in his car looking out at the blacktop and the shadows
of telephone wires
It isn’t a sad scene, not really
Some of us are getting
exactly what we asked for
Some of us
don’t even have
to wait
*
Think of my grandfather, still drunk or asleep, passed out on top of my
grandmother
so she has to wait for him
to come to
along with the late
Redwood City morning
the light skipping in
across
the swimming pool
The smell of failed sex
bourbon and
chlorine
Dead cigars
He taught me how to swim
with one of his hands beneath my legs and another beneath my stomach
how to cup my hands, how
to turn my head
Inhale and exhale
and move gracefully
through liquid
*
Look at
Jack’s father -
Stumbling into the bedroom at three in the morning the two of us asleep
and all that moonlight
and beat his son’s
head against
the headboard
You fucker you fucker asked for it
The moon
His jaw splashed across the pillowcase
*
The Parietal Temporal Occipital
The Atlas and Axis
Spheroid and
Spheroid
The real smile
real grin
Your movable and immovable joints
Your eyes
your orbits
Sutures
If given the chance
I would
break them all
*
For a long time my grandfather
tried to kill anyone
who came near him
Wives
Daughters
Stepdaughters
What is it called when insects are stuck forever in a kind of amber?
Then he got sick
and he was going to die anyway
and he stopped
trying to kill people
Then we could fall in love
*
My father’s advice is claustrophobic and flat as it fills the soft leather
booth inside the restaurant
Birthday lunch
Red neon
Cigarettes
What you need to do
is join the Army, the Marines
something
You need to be taught a lesson
*
Some of the men are standing in their backyards at night, looking up
at the stars
listening to the freeway
Their hands in their pockets
Everything’s just
as it was
My hands
in my pockets, curled
into tiny
fists
My belt buckle
gleaming
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