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My Father Full of Light

Tonight the moths are beating the shit out of themselves against the
screen door

It looks like smoke

So does the light

inside his rings, his

wristwatch

The blood swimming around inside his face

in lightning blotches beneath his skin

like the residue of beets

on a cutting board

also

emitted light

A blizzard of wings

*

He thinks God

is going to clean

everything up

Hands made from Light and Feathers, moving us around, dusting us off

Everything

settling back into the warm

colors of autumn

instead of getting

ground down

into glass

which, I get the feeling

diamond after

diamond

is what’s really

going to happen

*

I could have

whatever I wanted

once a year

Whatever you want

it’s on me

Coconut cream pies rotated slowly behind bright windows like the
cities of heaven

The register sang

Flies collected

on our water glasses

My father, for a moment, was full of light

Men came and went

I knew

our waiter was the son

of someone

from The End of the WestFind it in the library

Copyright © 2009 Michael Dickman
Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, Inc.
on behalf of Copper Canyon Press.

Published in Michael Dickman Poems

This program is supported in part by a grant from the Idaho Humanities Council, a State-based program of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

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