Across The Room
A boy gasps and cries
in Spanish
for his mother.
Metal slides on metal
as the key
lime curtain
parts for the doctor.
He gives me lavender
paste and tells me to drink.
My face freezes
in disgust
and then softens as the pain
washes away, like chalk
off a sidewalk. I sink
back, muscles relaxing.
I feel fragile. Uncertain
if I’m still here by God’s grace
or dumb luck and I wonder
if maybe you felt this way.
Was it the promise
of death or your unreliable body
that left you wide eyed and afraid
to go
to sleep?
Three weeks gone
and I haven’t given you a tear.
I curl into a sideways prayer
on the gurney. Across the room
the boy wails for his mother.
Dad Survives His Third Open-Heart Surgery
Don’t worry, Dad, you’ll be
talking again soon. I’ve watched you
breathe through tubes so many
times, but I can’t stop looking
at you like someone I don’t quite
recognize. When did you get
so goddamn old? Your hair stands
wild, sparse, like a balding troll
doll in its seventies. I want to laugh
but there are so many tubes growing
out of you. I try counting them
but I get to your face, wonder who
you are, and lose count. The two
largest spill out of your bed
ending in clear containers, slow
drip collections of blood and piss.
If you’d died under the knife, things
would be so easy. You’d be
the father who could never live
down his mistakes. I’d be the son
who didn’t learn how to forgive
in time, and everyone would understand
the burden of my guilt. I could
be brave in the face of grief. Live
my life. It would be an easy
easy lie. I used to punch
the brick wall in the alley until
I couldn’t hold a pencil. What kind of son hates
his father like that? What kind of man
sits next to his father’s hospital bed, sees
a lifetime of Christmas guilt and Father’s
Day backhands instead of a sick
old man on life support? Dad, why
can’t I hold your hand and tell you
not to worry? That this won’t last?
Greg walks in, presses his cheek
to yours, holds his phone like a mirror
says, “Don’t worry Dad, you won’t
remember this,” then leaves, nodding. I envy
his approach to shitty memories.
Somewhere inside me there’s a slow
leak. I know there were never enough
years to begin with, and I remember
when I threw away a prayer for you
to suffer like this every day. I’ve wasted
so much prayer, the shame smothers
me, like a desperate hug. No one
deserves this. Your new scar, dried
blood and surgical thread, laced
through welts of old scars, looks like
a black worm eating its way
up your chest. I drag my fingertips
across my own stratified scars
each one a permanent reminder
that you and I will always be
you and I, and I hope—
It’ll be alright, Dad.
Try to sleep a while.
Six-String Rising
Rouge on pale cheeks, blush
coins that somehow miss
your hollow eyes, face
emaciated, face white
like porcelain, like a doll
so white I want to draw on it, paint
your real face, not this
sunken still-life of starvation
and shame, this isn’t
you, this empty thing
in front of me, an abandoned
Cadillac, left to rust
in a long-forgotten wheat field I
want to see your face
again, see the smile that says
yeah, this is happening as you
play slide guitar with a burning
candle in a room of screaming
women, the smell of possibility
everywhere
I want to watch you raise the dead
again, with a pick and six
strings, make them dance, John
feral things, make them
sing a three-part harmony with God, sing
a rage of life
sing a story into being, sing of life
life, goddammit
who will sing
for you?
Tim Hatch writes poetry that explores themes of abuse, fragility, and our human obligation to one another. He earned his MFA at Cal State San Bernardino, and his poetry has appeared in East Jasmine Review, The Vehicle, Touch: The Journal of Healing, and Apeiron Review. He teaches English at Mt. San Jacinto College, and his collection of poetry, Wild Embrace, is forthcoming from Pelekinesis Publishing Group in early 2018.
Inlandia: A Literary Journey 