issue 43, 2008
The End of Fathers
There, at the edge of the shore
where there is no water,
but a promise of water,
where the sharp moon changes
into a full, round absence over
their shoulders as they walk, one-by-one,
into the sea that is
not the sea—
And each carries a conch, the mollusk,
still at home inside, still whispering
the sounds of waves when the fathers
lift them to their ears to call, but then
forget to call, or believe
the number has changed, the line
gone dead, their wives
remarried, their grown children speaking
nakedly to their lovers at night of a heavy-worn
memory, how colors blur
at the edges of photographs, how faces
look different from different angles, and family resemblances
are lost as they walk deeper and farther from
the shore, the voices of their mollusks
drying out—their steps careful into
the caverns, trenches, across empty
intersections, where signals change in cycle
without traffic. And, even if they didn’t smoke before,
each father lights a cigarette to make the caverns
seem warmer, more open—to watch the moon
attenuate through a haze of smoke, each
blaming another for the lack of light, the endless walk,
the way the moon turns
away from them, and because each
is in some way a likeness of the other,
blame themselves.
————
Danielle Cadena Deulen is a poet, essayist, and podcast host. She is the author of a memoir, The Riots (U. Georgia Press), and two poetry collections: Our Emotions Get Carried Away Beyond Us (Barrow Street) and Lovely Asunder (U. or Arkansas Press). She has been the recipient of an Oregon Literary Fellowship, an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award, and Jay C. and Ruth Halls Poetry Fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is co-creator and host of "Lit from the Basement,” a literary podcast. She is an assistant professor for the graduate creative writing program at Georgia State University in Atlanta. Twitter: @DanielleDeulen. Instagram: @dcdeulen. Website: danielledeulen.net.