Another Creature: Poems

A Smoke

A Smoke By late afternoon on the coldest day of the year he’d worked himself up to the highest peak, stripping black shingles pitched to fall over the porch in moldy patches as sky would soon fall, Old Testament sky, shot with red arrows into starry indigo. He’d cast off the safety line that bound him to our house, new father who’d named his new daughter after the white rapper’s daughter, young roofer with most at stake. And now he was straddling the roof peak in silhouette, tufty blonde hair gelled into chunks, square block of jaw, a cigarette held in the vise of his lips. He wanted the job done, wanted his money. This morning he’d been the first to arrive in blue darkness, below zero wind chill, in holey gloves, a frayed scarf tied under violet rings of bruises around his eyes, a jammed-on cap. Hopping side to side lightly to warm himself along little rises of snow in blue streetlight, he refused the thermos of coffee until we insisted, reek trails of whiskey 23 when he exhaled, smoke of tobacco and frost and fermented night. Imagine the lavender day-glo nap on the backs of his daughter’s toy ponies, same color of snow melting out of his boot treads onto the tavern floor. Maybe the ghost of his Purple Heart uncle bought the first shot, or the ghost of his grandfather killed by a falling log, or the father gone out for cigarettes who lit down the tracks to Idaho leaving one son to raise the rest. Maybe they all shared a smoke on the roof last night, from the same wrinkled pack, as you and your loves and all of your dolls slept sweetly beneath new shingles. 24 ...