I remember the guns in dad’s workroom
hanging on the wall, rifles with wooden
butts, kept dusty by non-use. No eye contact
with scope nor barrel: their breath smelled
like decay, cadavers, maggot food.
One was “collectable,” boxed
in mint condition, as if some cardboard
could save me from fear of death.
I remember how the workroom door
scraped the brick-colored floor when
it opened and closed; the sound of old
wood, shedding splinters, marking
arcs in basement concrete: the creak
a lighthouse, a foghorn, a siren.
I remember the way dad screamed,
threatened to use the guns on himself,
his face anguished, a dangerous cubist
painting—all angles sharp and sweet.
Even his deep crows’ feet were yelling,
a murder made maniacal. His mouth
took a menacing shape, yet his words
are staticky in recollection. He died
differently—not by guns but by detachment.
I forgot the gravel of his voice six months
before death made a home of his body.
I try to piece it together: after a lifetime
of tobacco, it must’ve rasped, rumbled
cavernous, it was blue smoke instead
of blue sky. His laugh must’ve played
the bassline. He was big, a broad man—
surely he sounded vividly chasmic.
When I assemble his voice in memory,
I hear the boom, echo of a gunshot.