Father rests his head, grown swollen,
against your shoulder, unbuttressed,
swaying in the bluster of someone
he left behind before your birth.
Where do you begin your search?

Father’s words are scrambled eggs.
He hands you the bowl, panicked,
asks you to separate frank from joke
but it’s a frenzied mess. He holds
a whisk in his hand, smoking gun.

Father’s elbows shiver like jazz
ensembles, but he hasn’t played
a note in years, you can’t squeeze
the music out. Jazz is not like that:
you can’t give father your calluses.

Father asks you, have I done good?
You nod, leaden, hold his childhood,
unwilling to dump it out, not knowing
where to keep it safe, not knowing
its shape beneath bloated skin.

Father is hopeful you’ll come around.
You haven’t been back in years.
You do not recognize his sinews
untempered by smoked herring
or rye bread. Doctor’s orders, see.

Father worries he is contagious,
is glad a continent separates you.
He does not understand the word
congenital, genealogy, generosity.
He’s asked for the keys to the family tree.

Father chews pomegranate blossoms.
Sap seeps from his eyes, on a stool
in the garden: the photo gone grainy.
Light is waning. You want to capture him
but father’s gone back to larvae.

Father watches angry white men on TV.
He says it comforts him, to see their veins
reveal themselves. It’s not PC, he says,
with a twitch in his eye, slowly calcifying,
milky, murky. He only sees memories now.

Father sleeps sitting down, wool over thighs,
drool like powdered milk drying on his lap.
You tuck him in but he will not stay.
You turn off the TV but he wakes up.
If you do not move, he cannot see you.