Natural History of Debris

This is my real father

Natural History of Debris

My father had two birthdays,

but a single life. He kept both papers

with zeal, they witnessed his existence.

His birth certificate had him registered

on a different day than the one we celebrated.

With one of those dates my tired father bribed death.

My sister and I always asked him

to tell us about his childhood.

He preserved intact the hamlet,

the village, his mother, his brothers.

The wondering, menacing animals,

the trees, imprecise like someone's dream

plus, every leaf in his lineage, each fruit

with the lukewarm temperature of its pulp.

The river close to the house,

the inexhaustible rancor.

He disappeared on that shore

at the age of six. He rose

from the worm entrails of dawn

and left without giving notice.

The house was calm, a sleeping cow,

his footsteps on the thin branches

could hardly be heard.

He would sleepwalk with his eyes

sealed with wax. Grandmother told me

she caught him by the stream ready to jump,

seek out the fish that were like threads that someone

braided to escape existence.

In his stories, things had equivocal

gestures. They gave the impression

of being disguised as themselves.

They were covered with a sweet

tree bark where, and over the years,

moss had grown and ants had opened paths

without being seen.

His father barely allowed my father

to remember him. He wasn't a man,

he was anger, a handful of knuckles,

wanton, brutal desire. He hung inert

at the center of my father's memory,

dangling face down, open throat,

while the soft clay

of his blood poured into a pot.

Inheritance must be read upside-down,

traversed with the finger

as if you were following the unequal

punctuation marks of braille.

Navigate upward, then make a boat

with the sad wood of the body.