Apparitions of My Sister
When Dad
crawled through the window
a precariously hung fire escape,
creaked an alarm
allowing him to steal
the only moment
of you,
swaddled in
a murder of crows
black feather, like your mother.
You liberated a cacophony of caws
when he bared
his pinky finger;
your fist a blur of plump brownish pink.
Eyes that clutch, instead,
blood falsehoods
the glazed reflection
of his face, and
years later, are still
blue and imperfect
a white man's eyes
chipped from ice
punctuated with speckles
of silver
the lining of clouds
not the veins of mud
swamps, bark, or her
mother’s hair.
It was 1969,
my father was eighteen
when he left it all behind him,
California,
a tropical quagmire,
his proposal,
his daughter,
her grandfather's stare
more thunderous then a tribal drum,
not-my- dau-ghter-, not-my-dau-ghter - white boy, not- my- dau-ghter-ever.
his thin sinuous tendons straining
as he danced to detain
the dirty beige dodge
that was heading to Denver.
Copyright © Jennifer Brooks | Year Posted 2006
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