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| This could be evidence of my sister's birth. |
Monday, April 11, 2011
Smoker's daughter
In the indigo blue
Chevy Impala the window is not cracked.
Along the levee past the fried-oyster
restaurants there is no moist air, no scent of the river and the muddy lake.
Over the bridge where the small boats pull into the launches with baskets
of bluecrabs, on the skyway over the industrial canal, smooth
eel of a road, past the Zephyr at Ponchartrain Beach,
onto Elysian Fields in the rain, it’s not cracked.
In this brocaded backseat, minnows
swim up uncracked windows. I’m breathing
my father’s breath.
Blue-red-blue streetlights flash as we pass,
blue seats glow purple. Smoke keeps rising
from the hand in the front, from the mouth
that may or may not be talking, may or may not be
smiling. The mouth below the nose, above
the stubbled chin, the mouth below blue
eyes that may or may not be bloodshot.
The lights pass in time with the wheels, rolling
over slabs of white pavement bound together with black
tar, streets edged in palmetto, crepe myrtle, magnolia
that may or may not be in bloom.
Spanish moss glows in oak trees, like the beard of ash that grows
on his cigarette, ash untapped till it reaches my father’s
calloused fingers, fingers bearing the scent of fish.
When the rain stops we crank windows wide. Smoke rolls
back as I hold my face to the air, long hair exploding,
filling my mouth and my eyes. The hand in the front, the left hand
on the left arm on the rim of the window, the hand with the fingers
that pinch the golden filter of the cigarette, the hand taps the drooping stem of ash,
and the ash peppers the air,
peppers his girl’s face behind,
peppers the whites of his daughter’s eyes,
peppers the reddening corners of my eyes.
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