Care Package, With Riddle As Missive
I found my father’s favorite Swiss army knife
in a box he sent me with no note,
just James Bond videos,
nothing else.
What was the message?
The message was there wasn’t one.
This world violent, full of sex,
the movie’s zeitgeist, era after era, a new Bond
double-o-seven-ing in.
Divorced dad Sundays
at The Greenwich watching
the British Secret Service save the world.
I thought he sent the knife inadvertently,
but now I see it was code—
he was boxed in
without a knife
to cut himself out.
Copyright Credit: Elizabeth A.I. Powell, "Care Package, With Riddle As Missive" from Willy Loman’s Reckless Daughter or Living Truthfully Under Imaginary Circumstances. Copyright © 2016 by Elizabeth A.I. Powell. Reprinted by permission of Anhinga Press.