my father’s fear is a sentence of stuttered punctuation
standing up at the back of his neck colon
2001 is not a space odyssey but
a finger spreading newspaper rows
curiosity through busted blinds
in print
a body pixels parallel to skyscraper
and smoke on the first day of school
my father cannot unhinge the safety clause of his arm
fast enough
and in print
someone else’s father
who looks like my own
but does not hold his language
gardens at his gas station
heavy arizona sun drench
until he doesn’t anymore
i convince myself they were sunflowers
i convince myself that his hands were sunken in soil
that he hummed
until he didn’t
anymore
these the things
i needed to be true
parenthesis
shovel red life gravel
close
colon
my father thanks a god he does not believe in
everyday he was not given
a son
colon
somewhere the metal and sidewalk of profile
still annotate his teenage body
his prayer is his palms at the back of his head
to Dostoevsky and Baldwin in his bag
un-searched
and in print
my middle school guidance counselor
is quoted at the townhall declining
the proposed Boys and Girls club
echoing a concern about the condo kids definition
the mexican and muslim children who cross
the freeway bridge to learn pray usage
one the children without
two the wrong kind
three no actually what i meant to say is increased traffic
colon
i ask if this is why my father has told me to hide my spanish
in my backpack
in my pink spacemaker pencilbox
in the milkypen constellation of our middle class
he answers by sending me to the dictionary for the word scapegoat
he tells me they all look the same
comma
we earn belts
at the karate studio down the street
he tells me it is a kind of reading
our dog dies that spring
in the backyard my father sneaks up
on me to see if i remember
to smash what surprises
would break his spine
for my awareness
pushes me ahead with fists out
period
my father has built me a fortress of books
and perfect grammar
has taught me to guard the windows with
straight A’s and flawless spelling
period
choose shy over surrender
mija
period
they see one thing
will see another
period
proofread everything
period
i am a cover of mystery and passing
i hold a bouquet of verbs
i am a tongue knot of something i was supposed to say for us
period
period
period
he puts a pen in my hand
hoping it will save us
he puts a book at my back
praying it will stop
a gun