June 17: Happy Father's Day, Holding on to Poem, "To My Father's Ashes"

Happy Father's Day.

It's been a quietly difficult day for me.  I've been writing for a good portion of it.  Stuff I've been meaning to do for a while.  Tonight, I'm going to relax.  Watch an episode of Better Call Saul on Netflix with my daughter and her boyfriend.

I do have a poem to share.  Something I wrote a while ago.  I've been holding onto it, unsure if I wanted to share it.

Saint Marty offers it tonight in honor of his father.

To My Father's Ashes

by:  Martin Achatz

Staring at your dust

in this black vase,

I wonder what of you

I possess.  The cinder

that was your hands. watered

tomato plants every summer

until they swelled into fists

of starfish.  Grains of your

crooked spine that kept

you from the missiles and grenades

of Pork Chop Hill and Pusan.

Or the pollen of your lips, tongue

that sipped Seven and Seven

all night until you didn’t remember

stoking the furnace with so much

wood that it roared, turned brick

red, almost reduced the house to char.

It could be the soot that was your testes,

scrotum, vesicles, the place

where the Y of me first swam

in white brine the night

you reached out, atlased

my mother’s body with yours.

Perhaps the ember of calf, shoulder.

Powder of ulna, incisor, humerus.

Or maybe it’s a part of you

I don’t know.  The finger

that traced the arc of a neighbor

girl’s breast under a haystack moon.

Your grey eyes, the ones the cried

for two days when your daughter

was born with an extra chromosome

swimming in the pools of her nuclei.

An eardrum that heard Louis Armstrong

coax “La Vie En Rose” from his trumpet

one August night at the Paradise

on Woodward when the Detroit River

was a black tendon of water.

Or a mole on your chest that your bride

kissed over and over on your wedding

night until it blossomed to the color

of lupin.

June 16: Happy Father's Day, New Poem, New Cartoon

I want to wish all the fathers out there a happy Father's Day.  I'm taking it easy today, so all you get is a new poem and new cartoon.

Saint Marty's going to eat some bratwurst now.

Fine Print

My job as a father today
is to watch my twelve-year-old
daughter go out the front door
to play basketball with the boy
from down the street who turned
thirteen last week and looks at her
like she's a meat-lover's pizza
and he's just finished football practice.
My job as a father today
is to catch my four-year-old
son on the playground, before
he scales the slide or swings
away on the monkey bars.
Catch him, haul him inside,
pinned under my arm, him slick
as a greased piglet, thrashing,
squealing all the way to the tub,
where he spits, kicks water
until I'm baptized, head-to-foot,
with fatherhood.  Yes, it's all
in the job description.  Check the fine print,
right below the subsections about shit,
vomit, Popsicles, strep throat.
It reads, Be prepared for broken glasses,
bones, watches, windows.  For first crushes,
kisses, first erections and break-ups.
Be prepared to work overtime
for dance lessons, summer camps,
class trips to Mackinac Island,
cell phones.  Be prepared to spend
twenty-plus years getting used
to their crying, bleeding, brooding,
and the rest of your life getting used
to their leaving.  See Section 93B:
Guilt and Grandkids.

Confessions of Saint Marty