Cleaning My Father’s Dojo
After Carolyn Forche
It is not because I tried to play god but I did once wear a sugarpink mouth painted
it nightly with blood my father’s hands browned comets capable of collapsing
a minor planet or a man’s clavicle his fingers like stalks of sweetgrass bending
as he grabbed a man’s face & showed me all the places skin is liable to disassemble
the river of bones the wrist will sing to keep the bushidoed gash of my childhood
leaving me with bodies I did not know how to dispose of the poems I wrote seasoned
with sunsets as if the deer did not drag their russet legs from the crashsite as if
the granite dice of their eyes did not rattle in the trunk of this or that unforgiving chariot
the summer I was fifteen the ghost of ears like dried peach halves swallowed me
nightly It is not that I tried to play god but I could not bestow forgiveness
on everyone the nights I spent wiping consenting blood from the floor of our dojo mine
and everyone’s the thing they don’t tell you about preparing for the war
your body is destined for is that sometimes you are strong armed into a car
by your own shadow honeysuckle enough to dead the flies without looking
at the water rusted with wings so sharp a father might sigh them with relief into your pocket
ichor is nothing but a relief of sweat you weathered on a blue red mat the balm
of bruise before the reckoning when I was five my father showed me how to gouge
a man’s eye like sweeping dust from the petal of an orchid warrior was his hymn to keep me
from harvest the halo of dust he circled ineffable & aching for flight the way one might
river enough softness to build the hilt of a knuckle or unfurl a spine
the penalties for making it out of this world alive is the blush
of a worn ankle some newly excavated phrase buckling below us
unearthing an old god of childhood from beneath that water or whatever other vision of sight
might leave the body warm might seed the page with furred haunches if only
to remember the sound of them vanishing not a single danger in sight
Bianca Braswell is a Cuban-American poet currently enrolled in the University of North Carolina at Charlotte where she is studying English and Film studies. She has previously been published in Stark poetry journal and has work forthcoming in Mineral Lit Magazine. She is currently working on her first poetry collection.