Ninety-six, my father floats
in a fearful dream, rises
outside his body,
but he’s stuck
in the living room, which appears
tilted at a surreal angle, ceiling fan
coming out of a wall. Float
somewhere nicer, my sister suggests.
Havana, Athens, Cairo, places he traveled
as a younger man, extra pages stapled
into his passport in accordion folds.
Or maybe visit that East Hampton bungalow
we used to rent before it became
such a fashionable address.
Help, help, he cries
arms flailing. Perched on a ledge
about to go over, he can’t find the floor,
though he’s upright, secure, and awake
in his chair. The usual laws
no longer apply. The structures
that house him, the very habits themselves,
relinquish their long service.
Coaxing, demanding, our voices
fade to distant traffic, our faces
vague moons. I’ve been out of my body,
he tells us at lunch, as we attend
to his labored breathing, keep trying
to fix his feet on the ground.
Kathleen Aguero’s most recent book of poetry is World Happiness Index from Tiger Bark Books. Her other poetry collections include After That, Investigations: The Mystery of the Girl Sleuth, Daughter Of, The Real Weather, and Thirsty Day. She has co-edited three volumes of multi-cultural literature for the University of Georgia Press (A Gift of Tongues, An Ear to the Ground, and Daily Fare). She teaches in the Solstice low-residency M.F.A. program at Lasell University and in Changing Lives through Literature, an alternative sentencing program. Kathleen has received grants from the Massachusetts Council on the Arts and the Elgin Cox foundation.
