April 7: Faith for My Father Circa 1950
Martha
Faith for My Father Circa 1950
Erik Campbell
When I think about it, usually at his grave,
where I try to think funny things, faith
for my father was pragmatic in deed,
evidenced best by the night he bought
the microwave oven and made popcorn
in a bag for the first time, which was
so modern, NASA-like for my brother
and me, we were suddenly science fiction,
one of the Space Giants or crewmembers
of Ark II. Our father squinted and jabbed
the start button, flinched slightly, retreated,
made us stand as far away from the machine
as the kitchen and Cold War would allow,
stood with arms outstretched in front of us,
Bruce Banner-style, against newly nefarious air.
And we were proud of him, would have thought
How intrepid he is, if we'd known the adjectives
to fit our impossible, periodic father. Soon,
we knew, we would push past the moon; it was
what we three so wanted and tacitly wooed,
a world of unbound horizons that smelled of popcorn,
aluminum, and prescience fulfilled. "If you can
smell it," he breathed over his plaid shoulder,
"particles are escaping. So, stay behind me, for
Christ's sake." Then he lit a cigarette, inhaled and
held it, and we waited, breath bated, for the future.
----
Also:
+ Before, Ada Limón
+ The Old Liberators, Robert Hedin
+ The Forties, Franz Wright
+ Antidotes to Fear of Death, Rebecca Elson
Spacewalk through poems sent today in:
2025: The Resemblance Between Your Life and a Dog, Robert Bly
2024: The First Line is the Deepest, Kim Addonizio
2023: Insha’Allah, Danusha Laméris
2022: To the Woman Crying Uncontrollably in the Next Stall, Kim Addonizio
2021: You Mean You Don’t Weep at the Nail Salon?, Elizabeth Acevedo
2020: Let Me Begin Again, Philip Levine
2019: Hammond B3 Organ Cistern, Gabrielle Calvocoressi
2018: Siren Song, Margaret Atwood
2017: A Sunset, Ari Banias
2016: Coming, Philip Larkin
2015: The Taxi, Amy Lowell
2014: Winter Sunrise Outside a Café Near Butte, Montana, Joe Hutchison
2013: The Last Night in Mithymna, Linda Gregg
2012: America [Try saying wren], Joseph Lease
2011: Boston, Aaron Smith
2010: How Simile Works, Albert Goldbarth
2009: Crossing Over, William Meredith
2008: The World Wakes Up, Andrew Michael Roberts
2007: Hour, Christian Hawkey
2006: For the Anniversary of My Death, W.S. Merwin
2005: The Last Poem About the Snow Queen, Sandra M. Gilbert