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Prairie Schooner 78.2 (2004) 141



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This

"Keep this," my father writes. "It's the last card
you'll get from me." I have a collection-
from Christmas, Easter, my summer birthday.

He empties his house, gives furniture to
strangers. "Take this," he says, offering me
frozen food that must keep two hundred miles.

He stuffs suits in my car, fills the front seat
with shoes. "Wear this," he says, meaning old ties
and a sweatshirt abandoned years ago.

He's proud to show two bare rooms, a garage
without tools. The newspaper passes in
the carrier's sack; magazines expire.

Behind us, the sun slides to memory.
The shadows we cast slip into our shoes.
"I'm ready for this," he says, but doesn't

follow me to the driveway. As if he
means me to see how everything will look
without him, he's vanished when I reach my car.

Gary Fincke is the director of The Writers' Institute at Susquehanna University. His non-fiction work Kicking Ass is forthcoming from Michigan State UP in 2004.


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