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Photograph: Boy in a Suit, Sixth Grade
- The Kent State University Press
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13 P h o t o G r a P h : B o y i n a s U i t, s i x t h G r a D e Wallets are too common, albums too comatose for photographs. mantels? They’re for ticking fathers. i keep this scrap of him in a corner of the mirror. he’s yellowed there, shed the cocoon suit, felt a knuckle or two of new wind since that year froze upon the glass. his mother, i remember, picked the tie— but the knot—a mystery. simple enough to stand behind a boy in front of a mirror and hand some secret down. and what would ever be more than this—the handing down i mean, one mouth, one hand to the next, and always the blood taking in what it can, making its laps, leading us on. Blood has the best memory, blood takes pictures of its own: the shaping of stone upon stone, the hunt, the long trek home, the fire making. and the fathers, the terrible fathers, blood has them all, squatting in the darks of caves, turning their hearts on sticks. ...