Mouth to mouth, my father said. 
Like this, and he bent over the cantaloupe my mom 
had been saving for breakfast, breathing or blowing 
in and out, in and out. 
It was always like that, something crazy 
before the day had really begun. 
Once he told me that he was successful 
because, no matter what, he could always express himself. 
It was six o’clock in the morning, and I watched him 
climb up on a soapbox he kept by his bed. 
He began to express himself. 
What I remember is that he talked about how much 
he hated department stores, and I think of him now 
as I drive past our failing mall, how happy he would be 
to see the almost empty parking lot and the access road rutted and torn. 

Once he followed me into the bathroom, 
held a cold hamburger from last night’s dinner to my nose. 
Here, he said, this smells fine, doesn’t it? 
Want it for breakfast? 
We walked together to the subway. 
Every day he stopped at the newsstand to buy the Times, 
which he picked up off a large stack. 
Above them hung the girly magazines, with women 
who looked half crazed. 
I never saw anyone buy one of these, 
but then I was so embarrassed that I looked away 
across Continental Avenue to where the Catholic School girls 
lined up for the bus. He crossed the street against the traffic, 
newspaper pressed to his nose, and I wonder how he never got killed 
by one of those cars whose drivers honked and screamed curses as he ambled by.
                        

My father stepped out from behind the curtain,
hair aflame, eyes dragging paintings from the wall —
landscapes and portraits, a series of colored squares 
lying smashed in their broken frames. 
There was a map of medieval Prague, 
a seascape with black clouds.
My father’s nose had been broken many times 
and now it swelled red like a water balloon.
He waved his hands above his head and sang 
with a sheetmetal voice, a voice of thorns and nails. 
We watched him pick his way across the room 
like a man crossing a frozen pond, step-slide, 
step-slide, until he collapsed on the couch, groaning 
with anguish and relief. 
My uncle wrapped him in a towel, and we applauded 
as they bowed, our faces in the windows swept by roaring wind.