FATHERS
On her lunch break,
she walks in and tells me
to read a letter she wrote.
It read: “Daddy, I’m very
angry at you and I feel
betrayed by you.”
Immediately, I imagine
mailboxes stuffed full
like a goose’s throat.
I imagine stepmothers,
cruel and in disbelief,
hiding these letters
under the weight
of mangled trash bags.
I imagine fathers,
finding letters like this
and reading them under
the tapestry of sunlight.
Fathers who will have to
listen to the brutal tongues
of their sons, their daughters.
I imagine, what I would
tell my father in a letter
like this. Would I mention
all the bad or not enough
of the good? Would I remind
him of his crying when I
overdosed on pills?
Dare I mention the night
he beat my mother, and
me on his back,
wailing, biting, hoping
the punches would stop?
Do I say I understand his wilting,
his failing heart, the disgrace
of old age? Then I think
of what my kids would say.
Would they too mention
the neglect, the buried nose
of a bookworm, the uncertainty
and the drinking? Would they,
years from now, feel betrayed
by a father gone blind
as the early night comes on?
Radames Ortiz’s work has appeared in numerous publications and anthologies
including, US Latino Literature Today and Is This Forever, Or What?: Poems
and Paintings from Texas. He was also awarded a 2003 Archie D and Bertha
Walker fellowship from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and was
nominated for a 2003 Pushcart Prize. Recently he was nominated for a
consecutive year to be the Naomi Shihab Nye Scholar and was invited to attend
the 2007 Poetry at Roundtop Festival. He also teaches poetry workshops for
Writers in the Schools.
