Poem of the Week | January 30, 2023

This week’s Poem of the Week is excerpted from “Epistle” by Robert Laidler.

Robert Laidler, Assistant Professor of Teaching in the Wayne State Department of English, is the author of a poetic libretto, The Fallen Petals of Nameless Flowers, which premiered at Chamber Music Detroit in 2022. He earned his MFA in poetry from the University of Michigan, where he is currently a Zell Fellow. His poems have won various awards and have been published in a number of places. He enjoys music, eating, and eating while listening to music.

 

Epistle

Dad,

I don’t like listening to people who are invisible. I know you won’t read this because you don’t read, I’m 21, and you’re not matter. Remember when we first met, I was 17 and you were older than that. I was intimately working on the twenty-something pages for my dissertation at a coffee shop Downtown. They had opened the week before with the slogan: Come with problems, leave. You walked in just like the picture. Job application in hand, you were taller than I’d imagined. You approached the counter and asked if they hired felons, convicts, strippers, boat detectives, sea otters, farmer Jacks, and whatever else was written on your unspoken face application. They nodded you away, the future felon look was easy for them to see. Your eyes met mine and we shared “the look.” Your forehead wrinkled and so did mine, you tapped the corners of the help wanted poster, but hypocrites don’t like other hypocrites. You came over to my table and asked what I was typing. I told you. You walked away because you didn’t know any of the words. “I’m writing how celestial beings can sometimes be crackheads.” I lied to you. And I just lied about you not knowing the words. And I’m lying about you being my father. Remember when you saw me at my graduation. You sat in the back with a handkerchief in your lap and a du-rag on your head. You brought a plastic bag to brush in between speeches. You waited until my name was called. You looked around like your name was called, you almost walked to the front. You almost took the degree for yourself. I was angry. I told them to put jr. I told them that I am not you and that you’d be there because I would lie and tell you that there would be free food afterward. You were high and didn’t clap. I lied about you coming. I lied about the name thing. I lied about this whole situation. I don’t like conclusions, so I don’t write them. The truth is, I am not smart enough to argue with you. Every pain I’ve felt from you, you’ve felt from a father. I want to say you’re wrong. I want to say that the cosmic spaces between us is the reason I’m writing this, whatever this is. I want to say so much, but in the interim between now, and when you get to me in the center of the city, I’m afraid it will be too late. Father, whom I love, I’m asking you to be a father worthy of that love. The choice, though scary, is necessary. I may be shot, I may lose a life, or multiple. Father, please pass through the streets. Please listen to what you have to go through. Get to me.

 

son,

I am not a bad father yet. I am also not a good one. I keep my darlings in line, and my children in spreadsheets. My first born, you know that you are not a man in the present sense; you are much more open than I. I didn’t teach you to be this way, I didn’t teach you anything. I can’t teach what I don’t know. I do know things. I know of hidalgo, and Oedipus. I know of grape trees and rose bushes. I know of Somalia, a country. I know this from school where the teacher placed her hands on the pickle jars that we brought, opened them up, and made us do chemical science with the pickle juice. She told us that Somalians spend all their time on someone else’s boat. The pickle science never worked, it was supposed to catch on fire or forget something or shake. Everything sat there: the pickle, and the science. I know of the war porn of African suffering. Pictures on the board of children with swollen stomachs and grown men with burned knuckle sandwiches; from the guns or the fires, I couldn’t tell. She wanted to use the pickle juice to preserve something that was rigor mortised. She brought in a chicken that smelled like how death sounds. It was from her house; it was de-feathered and pink-purple. She poured pickle juice all over the chicken and told us to watch how science would de-rot the rotting thing; how something full of decay would grow wings and not fly. The smells mixed and for a moment science was taking over, we could see the chicken that was pink, turn even more the same color. The juice dripped down the sides and onto the table. The stench went away, but the bird was still rotten and decaying. “Africa could use some pickle juice” she said with a smile. She later died on a boat. Her father posted on her Facebook when she died, then he died from suicide via broken heart bullet. I’m not writing this to depress you, son, but you must understand that my life is not one of ease and smoothality. I was not there for you because I wanted to be there for you. Whatever can go wrong, will abandon its child. You can’t conclude my love as nothing if you haven’t experienced it. I’m rambling, and you’re reading, and this is bonding. This is me, wanting to know what it’s like: our first fight. Now go to your room-tomb. Turn off your Tv and give me your phone number so I can call you. I’ve received your letter. I haven’t been a dead-beat or an anti-you dad. I haven’t turned your stomach or been absent enough to have you hate me. I love the idea of you, but there is something that I have to get straightened out first. The letters you are writing to me are scaring me. How can you hear me, how can you know, if there is no connection between you and me? I’m not a bad dad, and how did you get my address? And how did you get my name? I’m not a bad father either. I just want you to know that I love you, but I don’t remember you. I hope that doesn’t hurt. I hope the things that you are feeling are just feelings. I can fix feelings; I can’t fix minds. Don’t do anything yet. Don’t write back. Please write back, but not as hostile. I will pass through the streets. What is the first?

 

Author’s Note

In this excerpt from my poem “Epistle”, I examine the problems of fatherhood, sonship, and inheritance using two metaphorical voices. The first voice is that of a son who has yet to be born but is thinking about what it will be like should the relationship with his father go south. The second voice is that of a father, who is not a father yet, who feels the need to defend himself from the angst of his unborn son while trying to deal with his own issues. All of this comes from real introspection, but none of it is aimed or directed at any individual in my life. The entire poem of “Epistle” is 12 letters long. These letters are the first two in the sequence.

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