Involuntary Memory

I was eating a bologna and mustard sandwichthe day my father fell against a hot stoveand burned the shape of Africa into his right palm.

We were staying with an aunt in Iowa City,an aunt who used to be a nurse but quitfor fear of AIDS. It was August, my ninth summer.

I remember how the ruined skin pickled,how my father did not cry though the burn weptsour gold the whole time we were there.

For days, women who smelled of hairsprayhad been x-raying my kinked spine,wrenching and measuring my flaccid ankles,

carting me between ovens that turned outto be MRI machines. Then one doctor convincedmy parents to let him circumcise me

during a skin graft so that I woke with a moonof stitches in my cock and didn't know why.Back home, the grown-ups lamented

the inconvenience of a 3rd grader in diapers,the result of beer cans and ashtrayspearling a pregnant diabetic's bedskirts.

Then my father tripped, palmed the stoveand rose cursing, calling for ice and a bandage.They'd never read Proust, had no idea I'd remember

the sheen left by that untended bit of fire.And in time—the smell, that wild muskwhen what is wounded begins at last to heal.