(For my daughter)
Genetic factors appear to play a significant role in alcoholism and may account for about half of the total risk for alcoholism.-The New York Times, July 9, 2011
You are an heiress to drunks.
The statues of your forefathers stagger,
memorialized by gravity, their faces
eternally half-lit, as they reach into refrigerators
for another something
to keep away the cold empty.
I am sorry for the stories
unfolding in your blood, especially
the ones that could end with you, 16
18, 20, 40, stranded
in your body, looking for messages
in bottles of Heineken, Pabst, Blue Moon,
or Jack Daniels. By the time
I figured out that whiskey made me angry,
I was overseas, away,
kicking my fallen best friend in the ribs,
pleading in the dark, screaming street,
Why can't you just be a man? That was my first
real lesson in addition and subtraction.
I vowed afterward
to only drink the clear stuff, to stay
away from anything amber—no more bourbon, rum,
marigolds, Wurlitzers, Monarch butterflies, Raymond Carver.
No more sunrises, or sunsets, no more Tom Waits or slow burning
fires. No more long walks in November. Sorrow
is when you're afraid to love anything that glows,
is when you believe that any kindness is a sniff
of raw meat, a dab of honey baiting
the trap. Before your father was your father,
he came to my front door with flowers, and my heart sank,
I sneered, What do you want from me? that fragrance,
an anchor, dropping me right back
into my mother's kitchen
her eyes fixed on the vase stuffed with lilies, a plea
for her to keep quiet about last night, last week,
and all the ones before it. Mom's taste
in men, her love for all things broken
taught me metaphor. Around our house,
poems wrote themselves
Love is a busted dead bolt on the front door.
Regret
is the next morning, those same hands shaking
as he mends the broken chain on your blue bicycle.
Or maybe it's the other way around. Maybe
regret is the busted dead bolt, and it's love,
that's the shaking hands. I can never seem to keep it
straight. And this is why, Daughter,
I am writing to you from all these years away,
to tell you I am glad I learned to take flowers
from your dad, that no gesture
is empty, and that, while my father waltzed with his guilt
and my mother, her fear, the two of them
spinning and spinning,
I held my breath, a bright penny,
tight in my fist, my hands at my side,
which is why, sweet daughter, now
that I've arrived decades later, with my life still
intact, I am giving you
this.
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After reading Yusef Komunyakka's "My Father's Love Letters," this poem began to take form in my mind. When I sat down to write it, the lines came so fast I couldn't keep up with them.
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Painfully beautiful.
Sarah, I'm so glad you posted this here. I can hear you reading this. Powerful and painful. *
No words need be said.
*
"marigolds, Wurlitzers, Monarch butterflies, Raymond Carver"
Wow. *
A perfect description of a very imperfect subject. This is full of regret, but love also shimmers in the half-light. So good.*
Thank you to all. It's so gratifying to know that this poem is working.
wonderful to find this through Ed. Eye feature. Beautifully lit, the writing here, its catalog of alienating ruin brought forth sensitively...the images dead on, the half-lit faces in refrigerator glow...and then the line about being afraid to love anything that glows...the way you caught the duality of the condition this way. And near the end my favorite lines, the images of family bearing up or not under weight of it all:
“..my father waltzed with his guilt / and my mother, her fear, the two of them / spinning and spinning, / I held my breath, a bright penny," *
Strong.*