BREAKFAST
The brisket this morning is thicker than usual. My father sits
across the table and talks about how people grow apart. I stab an
egg and watch the yolk bleed into the potatoes. We split a
cinnamon roll, and he says your mother sure could bake a coffee
cake. In the afternoon, we find a cafe with couches and rest our
feet on a table. I watch the sun. He writes in long form on a pad
of lined paper. I read Gertrude Stein and ask him if he’s ever
read her. No, he says, don’t think so. But once I found a copy of
Portrait of the Artist with his annotations in the margins. One
time he told me he was a poet.
DINNER
The waitress wore high-waisted jeans and wrote the menu in ink on a paper
tablecloth. We sat in the corner with dim light and you explained how citations
work: If the boy is wearing a red hat, then I reference the place where hat is first
mentioned. If the boy hates the hat, then I point the reader toward the place
where the boy stomped on the red hat, which, we can then infer, means he hates
the red hat.
I can tell with ease
you find the pork too salty.
I grin as you chew.
Laura Jo Hess holds an MFA in poetry from The New School. Her work is forthcoming in Barrow Street Journal.
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