\nMy father loves the way only an ex-soldier can.
\nHe loves with things handy and familiar.
\nLike steel or fist.<\/p>\n
My father is practical.
\nThe way his belts love my behind.
\nThe way his knuckles love my cheek.
\nHis love is like the scars on his thigh.
\nScars, the memory of six bullets.<\/p>\n
My father walks with a limp
\nfrom wrestling with death
\nand breaking its jaw.
\nHe had nursed his limp
\nlong before I stumbled into the world.
\nLike an accident.
\nMy birth was accidental. <\/p>\n
My father jokes only in the evenings
\nbefore his eyes
\nturn bloodshot
\nfrom the images of mashed bodies,
\nhouses charred and tottering.<\/p>\n
There are evenings I am a crab in a corner,
\nscuttling hushed in the shadows.
\nBut my father often pins me down
\nby his side on the deck.<\/p>\n
Gin in hand, he inspects motes,
\nomens stalking the air,
\nand reminds me of vultures ripping down
\nthe throat of a dream,
\nthe dream of a nation
\nonce heady from freedom.
\nHe had watched his father\u2019s body,
\nsmashed beneath a boulder,
\ngush like a burst pipe.
\nHe had heard his mother gasp his name,
\njust when he had managed to haul her,
\ntangled and leaking,
\nto what was left of the clinic.<\/p>\n
My father never forgets
\nthe riotous mood of sirens,
\nscampering and ducking in every direction,
\nwhile he had reached for a limb
\nand trekked for two miles or so,
\nuncowed by screams and smoke,
\nsearching for its missing owner
\nuntil a woman in rags
\nhopped out of the bush
\nand screamed at him
\nto let go of the limb.<\/p>\n
There is nothing as beautiful as palm trees My father always ends his stories Sip up, son. The world is already drunk.<\/em> <\/strong><\/p>\n On the deck, my father traces the scars on his thigh, Perhaps this is what love is\u2014<\/p>\n There is no love more practical The gin is fire on my tongue. One evening, my father was scoffing Pink flames tickled me<\/p>\n from head to toe. I think my father saw that I was full of feathers and light.<\/p>\n He saw his gin was two fingers short. out of the kitchen.<\/p>\n My mother looked at my father. Looked at me, Even as lakes swam across my eyes,<\/p>\n I could tell But my father, a bull at rest, What we love often consumes us. <\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Monkey Training for a Circus<\/strong>
\n<\/em>flailing in a festival of fires<\/em>.<\/p>\n
\non this image, smacks his lips,
\nand shoves his tumbler in my face,
\nhis gestures, always martial.<\/p>\nThere is no love more practical than father and son sipping gin<\/h3>\n
\na mine of memories,
\nseared out of love and daring,
\nas I pucker my lips and sip his gin,
\nwary, like a cat,
\nthe vanishing cat
\nin my mother\u2019s lullaby.<\/p>\n
\nthan father and son
\nsipping gin in the backyard.<\/p>\n
\nThe gin is raw honey in my throat. <\/p>\n
\nat the gaudy parade
\nof soldiers flaunting rifles on TV,
\nI shunned the tumbler,
\nswigged from the bottle,
\nand found my eleven-year-old body
\ndancing
\nlike a palm tree
\non fire.<\/p>\n
\nI danced,
\nmy belly flaming pink,
\nmy arms barely mine,
\nmy legs jelly fish all over the floor,
\nI danced until I fell,
\na flamingo,
\nin front of my father,
\ngiggling.<\/p>\n
\nInstead of whipping out his belt,
\nas he was wont to,
\nhe gave a laugh
\nthat whizzed my mother<\/p>\n
\nas if I was double,
\nas if I was disjointed,
\nas if I was disappearing.<\/p>\n
\nshe feared that the war
\nwas happening again
\nin my father\u2019s head.<\/p>\n
\nunleashed,
\nas would a magician,
\na gap-toothed grin and said,<\/p>\n
\n Give the photographers no more
\nops like this denatured rhesus monkey
\nturned tragic clown. Jammed against
\na man-made wall, he would fade out
\nof his overexposed life,
\nbut a chain collars him to a bike;
\nneck and prop bound in motion\u2019s
\ntug\u2019o war–he\u2019s screwed
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 in black and white.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":4984,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue28\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue28\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue28\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue28\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue28\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue28\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5341,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue28\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78\/revisions\/5341"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue28\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4984"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue28\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue28\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue28\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}