Self Portrait as My Father (Trying to Use Siri) (Filling the Time)
bismillah bismillah what is the name? windexing pink
formica, building a ramp for the dog—where do you
think about god & what do you think about animals
—wanting, like animals, being made: monsters of—
knuckles like knobs: begging to turn, muttering: I have
a design—show me sun & its frightening structure,
show me photographs pooled in the eye—what is the
word for? some act of new burial? what is the sun for:
leaking, like a faucet, its light—mabruk mabruk,
when we really mean: soften, hello, hello when it’s
really: good lie—everything said twice is more true,
twice as true—everything true is a matter of holding
—the name of the man in the film? the film about
great escapes—having an afterlife & calling this: after
life—saying: this is the way—pruning the roses &
saving the clippings, cacti: discernible facts, facts: like
undoable gods—after life comes the films about
fathers: wasting the mountain & craving the cave,
shoving the ocean in two spare jars—& how long can
the earth keep growing? & how soon can the growing
stop—going to the store for milk, coming back
thirstless but hungry—shukran when we’re not yet
that grateful, always when there’s barely the time—
who I know to have died, to have died, who I know to
have uncaught the light—being a father is being the
moon: lying about its dark sides, being a father is being
his child: eating an artichoke whole, swallowing tender
& whole—show me roses that taste good in tea, show
me tea that tastes good like home—a fortune
that begins even though, a though that ends: with goodbye—
a body that mimics the tree line: shaped daily &
roughly by wind—& tell me the truth about
something: some thing that unburies the light—tell
my father: I heard what you said & self portraits are
never really of self
Source: Poetry (December 2020)