Breathtaking
- Breathtaking
When your father, dying of cancer,suddenly sits up in bed and saysDon’t you fucking do it to meit can take your breath away.
The way the sky late winter blank,then sacked with starlings,leaves you stunned, gropingfor a stone to put on your tongue.
See something; say something.A bicycle with no one riding—A joke, cruel child, uncool godwagering the getting wrecked.
In possible realms of suffering,a father dying is no big deal.Even the kid who owns the bikelaughs his way to a happy life.
Not you, chasing in your earnestgaloshes, enthralled that it isthe dead pedaling, that it isyour soul perched on handlebars
singing your favorite songs,begging the dead to pedal onas the bike wobbles and tilts—A red bike down a gray street
flanked with rows of forsythia.Starling, father, whiskey, song—In the end he wanted to benone of these things, not even [End Page 148]
a ghost in the poem you arewriting him into. Don’tDon’t you fucking do it to meIt takes your breath away. [End Page 149]
James Hoch is the author of A Parade of Hands (Silverfish Review Press, 2003) and Miscreants (W. W. Norton, 2007). He has received fellowships from the NEA, the Bread Loaf and Sewanee writers’ conferences, St. Albans School for Boys, and the Frost Place. He is Professor of Creative Writing at Ramapo College of New Jersey, and Guest Faculty at Sarah Lawrence.
