Impossible Kiss, and: My Father Sings Dylan at Sixty-Two

Impossible Kiss

In the dry fountain at the centerof the Sunken Gardens on one foot,

a woman in a coat of living pigeonsholds her breath, and—hallelujah—

where always there is doubt,I am not afraid to call this belief.

Soon, someone already ashamed says,she will lift her arms

like a conductor,and they'll scatter right off

of her. We'll be on our ownagain. But think of them

together this second, Lover.I know you, Lover,

a piece of somethingabout to unhold

but holdingwhile, everywhere, people say,

Look! The world's wingsare coming apart.

My Father Sings Dylan at Sixty-Two

The old chorale voice chants, Where there has been tragedy,there will be laughter, and I don't know if my father at ten knows it yet,nitpicking the ugly dumpsters behind the theater where his motherpawns him off every Sunday, my father babysat by the same moviescreen over and over until his mother's last called or eighty-sixedout of her bar, my father handing a half-eaten banana or last biteof found hotdog to his little brother, my father shivering the curb,having had enough of being headlocked by his drunken mother'sdrunken boyfriend, my father's scabbed hand finding the knifeand burying it hilt deep in the boyfriend's ass, father hurdlingout of the apartment and never coming back, and nowat sixty-two clawing with me through a chicken carcassand acting out the stabbing and laughing because he knowsour lives are the greatest of jokes, so why not laugh at them,at all fathers acting absurd with turkey legs or bowls of noodles,or chili dogs or anything foody, at our fathers slinging sandbagand-squid rigs into the ocean, flipping tri-tip or sizzlingpinch baskets of scallops or homemade jalapeño popperson the barbecue pit, my father with three teeth missingbehind his drum kit banging "Knockin' on Heaven's Door"into the microphone, my father having lived through the armyand forty-four years on his back on a creeper under eighteen-wheelers,forty-four years of cigarettes and six-days-a-week and invincible greaseunder his fingertips and dive-bar live shows and tie-dye, having livedthrough a heart attack on Christmas day, my father sings Dylanlike a mystic hymn, smokes the live mic like a Lucky Strike because he's livedthis long enough to quit drinking, and we, his children and everyone elsein the world he never laid a hand on, listen, tearing into racksof his secret-seasoned spareribs, the old family riddle all over our faces.