The Patriarch

Of course we knew the “incidents,” the aura

of Divinity, duck-and-cover in the parking garage,

Gloria Swanson chinchilla redux, yes,

he’d been a bombshell—the eyes still sang

with the merriment of a punchbowl, fine wrists,

that dahlia neck, skin bleached with peroxide,

of course he swam in the nude, stashed gin

in the toilet tank, stored stockings in the freezer

so they wouldn’t run, had a thing for Adenauer,

played roulette with the .45 won in a Cuban dancehall,

raging along hallways, fathering four children,

feeling the eyes of the back stairs, beck of the undercurrent,

his own hand in his lap like an orphan,

of course he gardened in Dior, of course he was flagrant,

but what escaped us was the way he peeked

into the neighbor’s kitchen drawers for something

he swore they’d stolen, beyond the foreground obligation,

aspiration insistent as a stuck car horn in the slow

blue hours of morning, discarded affection,

what escaped us was the dampness at the collarbone,

the delicacy of the pose (cigarette and upturned cheek),

the lingering by the kitchen knives, the bias cut

off the dressing gown, break and fall, tumbrel of illusion—

and what we wanted to escape: that he was ruthless, beyond hope.

Source: Adonis Garage (The University of Nebraska Press, 2005)