Andrew Hudgins Verse-Virtual 2016 May

May 2016

This poem is based on a game my father did in fact play with my brothers and me, and it never, ever ended well. How could it? We would either think he was dead, and be distraught, or we’d do something to provoke a response, like pinch him, and he’d be enraged. But he was not a hugger, not a demonstrative man, and now I think the game was his way of letting us touch him.

Playing Dead

Our father liked to play a game.
He played that he was dead.
He took his thick black glasses off
and stretched out on the bed.

He wouldn’t twitch and didn’t snore
or move in any way.
He didn’t even seem to breathe!
We asked, Are you okay?

We tickled fingers up and down
his huge, pink, stinky feet—
He didn’t move; he lay as still
as last year’s parakeet.

We pushed our fingers up his nose,
and wiggled them inside—
Next, we peeled his eyelids back.
Are you okay? we cried.

I really thought he might be dead
and not just playing possum,
because his eyeballs didn’t twitch
when I slid my tongue across ’em.

He’s dead, we sobbed—but to be sure,
I jabbed him in the jewels.
He rose, like Jesus, from the dead,
though I don’t think Jesus drools.

His right hand lashed both right and left.
His left hand clutched his scrotum.
And the words he yelled—I know damn well
I’m way too young to quote ’em.