Skindeep 70 x 70 cm - mixed media on paper
AMERICAN DAD (A POSTHUMOUS LETTER)
Dear dad, don’t pull that guy
with slicked back hair through the window
of his idling Porsche. Don’t drop him on his face. Intersection
Hollywood & Vine, twelve lanes of traffic. Middle of the day!
Just because he flipped you off. And do
you have to shoot fur-bearing animals for fun
while you’re probably thinking about how many
hot dogs you’re going to gobble for lunch? Huh? How many
cups of coffee while you tell everyone at the diner
tales of your life, how you were in the 82ed Airborne, shook
JFK’s hand under the wing of a C-130 during the
Cuban missile crisis. How you cried when he was shot. Or
whenever you heard Caruso on the turntable. Like a Sicilian
hit man at his dying mama’s bedside. How you made everyone
seek cover as you sized them up as targets of opportunity
in the war of survival, or calculated the best
way to shoot down a young man’s lightly feathered ego.
from 23 on
I was gone
Still, there’s no getting away from these people. Sometimes when
I’m shaving, he says, Boy, you look just like me.
