Kafka
By Nick Flynn
The cause of death seems to have been
starvation—his throat closed
& so he was no longer able to swallow. On his
deathbed he was editing The Hunger
Artist, which, perhaps ironically (perhaps
not), he'd begun working on before he was
felled. My father
will, the doctor tells me, also starve to death,
he also cannot swallow I have said no
to the feeding tube because I imagine that is
what I would want someone to say for me,
but really, how the fuck do I know? The fact
that I am the one who will pull the plug on him
& that I will pull it with one simple word
is in the realm of the unbearable, but
apparently
I will bear it. The doctor promises to make him
comfortable, which means
morphine...nowadays this is how the plug
is pulled. Afterward,
the money he buried under that tree,
the take from all his bank jobs, all of it
will come to me, if I can just get him to draw me
a map, if I can find the tree, if I can find
his shovel. And the house, the mansion he
grew up in, soon a lawyer will pass
a key across a walnut desk, but even this
lawyer will not be able to tell me where this
mansion is. And my father's masterpieces, his
many novels, mine
now to publish—I don't have to tell anyone
I didn't write them, not a word.
Copyright Credit: Nick Flynn, "Kafka" from My Feelings. Copyright © 2015 by Nick Flynn. Reprinted by permission of Graywolf Press.
Source: My Feelings (Graywolf Press, 2015)