The Guest
Cold turquoise, a rumor of dawn.
I shiver on the porch steps, drag long
and hard on my smoke. I gave
the bedroom a try but couldn't settle.
In the living room, I thumbed through
a photo album till I found you diving
off the Ocmulgee bridge, your body
a perfect, curved machete of flesh
scything the sky. Years later,
the river shallow enough to wade,
you carried me to a sandbar isle
where I sat in reeds, cracking mussels.
The bed is too short. In the painting
over the headboard, mynah birds
stared at me, blank as scared children.
So I came out here where I can hope
something makes sense, where I can sort
through the shells of my exile.
Father, why does growing up take
such a little while? One day I read
your gift, a dog-eared Treasure Island,
the next your first letter. It skipped
what would never be explained: a rift,
a suicide, what happened. Now I have
many letters and all your tears --
things have really been piling up.
When I was six, telling a story
in my perambulatory way, I wandered
off the end of the dock and vanished
through a longboat's rotted hull.
The sudden chill, the grasp of weeds
at my feet, the choke of dirty water
and its thrill in my throat. In that veil
I see you diving still, searching
me out and clutching my thin limbs,
hauling me sputtering to the shore.
Nothing makes sense anymore -- my life,
your life, or this home where somehow
I'm a guest. I don't know how to tell you
any of this. Now I'm inside, now
I'm listening by your door. Outside,
the sky grows an impossible pearl.
An earlier version of this poem appeared in the journal Able Muse,
where it was a finalist for the Write Prize.
Copyright 2012 by Joshua Lavender.
Back to Poems
where it was a finalist for the Write Prize.
Copyright 2012 by Joshua Lavender.
Back to Poems