If You Had a Different Father, Would You Still Be You?
[question asked by Dan Veach]
He slipped on his shoes & rushed out the door to buy me Star Wars action figures as soon as he
saw the first ad on TV. He rarely drank, except on special occasions—Dickel & Coke, just
one—because his alcoholic dad taught him cruelty of the bottle, a brutal gift he refused to share.
Rather than have the father/son talk, he bought me a book on sex—not The Joy of or a manual
showing positions, more Philosophy for Beginners. Each year, he lit the torch on ten thousand
Christmas lights, gathered with family, helped prepare a holiday feast one might see in movies. I
cried when he & my mother divorced—fearful sadness—too much for a boy of eight. On
weekends, I saw him. We watched football, played chess, talked about life without speaking:
defining me by those things in the same way one red dot cuts art from canvas covered inch by
inch in midnight black.
He slipped on his shoes & rushed out the door to buy me Star Wars action figures as soon as he
saw the first ad on TV. He rarely drank, except on special occasions—Dickel & Coke, just
one—because his alcoholic dad taught him cruelty of the bottle, a brutal gift he refused to share.
Rather than have the father/son talk, he bought me a book on sex—not The Joy of or a manual
showing positions, more Philosophy for Beginners. Each year, he lit the torch on ten thousand
Christmas lights, gathered with family, helped prepare a holiday feast one might see in movies. I
cried when he & my mother divorced—fearful sadness—too much for a boy of eight. On
weekends, I saw him. We watched football, played chess, talked about life without speaking:
defining me by those things in the same way one red dot cuts art from canvas covered inch by
inch in midnight black.
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Ace BoggessAce Boggess is author of three books of poetry, most recently
Ultra Deep Field (Brick Road, 2017), and the novel A Song Without a Melody (Hyperborea, 2016). He is an ex-con, ex-reporter, ex-husband, and exhausted by all the things he isn’t anymore. His poetry has appeared in Harvard Review, North Dakota Quarterly, and many other journals. He lives in Charleston, West Virginia. T // @AceBoggess FB // Ace Boggess GR // Ace Boggess |