My father is calling the neighbours names
Out on the grass
my father is calling the neighbours names.
It is his art.
Softly, he starts to mourn.
The sky’s a mild suburban blue,
each lawn so circumspect
it’s like a stamp,
but he is being moved
by something subterranean.
Come see: my father is unravelling.
His face is working loose.
Drink has smoothed out his consonants
until his voice is like an oracle,
but in reverse:
a wheel revving through mud,
his curse just so much effluent.
Cruel, to be made to think
that this is speech;
that it is something like a hammer
poised
in his weakly quibbling hand.
Alan Humm is the editor of One Hand Clapping magazine. His first collection, A Brief and Biased History of Love, will be published in September and his first novel, The Sparkler, will be published in spring of 2023.