Father

•

Laid out on the sidewalk, in a shiny navy suit,
hands folded on his belly-neither dead nor alive.

I pick up a stick thick as a baseball bat,
big enough to whack

an apology out of him. Get up,
I'm taking you to court for child abuse.

Whack. Whack. Whack.
Clouds of dust billow out of him

like that sudden amorphous rising
when you beat an old rug on the clothes line.

remember that Fourth of July you
kicked the dog 27 times at the barbecue

at Minnehaha Falls? What about the time
you took my brother apart in the back yard?

Well, take this, prick. I take out my gramma's
old farm gun, unload it into his groin. No blood

spurts out of the holes, only fumes.
Then that gray residue of fireworks oozes

itself forth. Snakes along the sidewalk.
I walk over to him and bend down close.

Lift his face by the chin. Look at me
when I'm talking to you. His face crumbles,

a puffball disintegrating.
The wind comes up, flings

the fruitful bodies across green fields.

There's nothing left in my hands.