August 2016
Chris Forhan
cforhan@butler.edu
cforhan@butler.edu
This poem appears at the end of a book that focuses in large part on my father, who took his own life when he was forty-four and I was fourteen. Having written those poems that meditate upon--and dramatize--experiences I had when I was growing up, I still felt a nagging itch to explore the subject in other ways. Wanting to know more about my father, who had remained in essential ways a mystery to me, I wrote a memoir, MY FATHER BEFORE ME, which has just been published by Scribner. More at my website: www.chrisforhan.com
What My Father Left Behind
Jam jar of cigarette ends and ashes on his workbench,
hammer he nailed our address to a stump with,
balsawood steamship, half-finished—
is that him, waving from the stern? Well, good luck to him.
Slur of sunlight filling the backyard, August’s high wattage,
white blossoming, it’s a curve, it comes back. My mother
in a patio chair, leaning forward, squinting, threading
her needle again, her eye lifts to the roof, to my brother,
who stands and jerks his arm upward—he might be
insulting the sky, but he’s only letting go
a bit of green, a molded plastic soldier
tied to a parachute, thin as a bread bag, it rises, it arcs
against the blue—good luck to it—my sister and I below,
heads tilted back as we stand in the grass, good
luck to all of us, still here, still in love with it.
Published as "What He Left Behind" in Black Leapt In (Barrow Street Press, 2009).
©2016 Chris Forhan
©2016 Chris Forhan
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