WEBVTT

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This is a poem
called After Image.

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It's another one of the poems
about my father's death.

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I tried to see him.

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And nothing complicated
trying to see him.

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I try to get his
image in my head.

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After image refers to that
psychological phenomenon,

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you look at crossed lines
or something or other.

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Close your eyes,
you still see them.

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That's what I mean by the title.

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But I consciously, at one point,
try to beckon a memory of him.

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Just to visualize him.

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That's all.

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I wanted to look at it closely.

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And that's what
the poem is about.

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I lay me down in the sunken
eyes of my father float above.

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A dry yellowish scale lodges
at the corners of his mouth.

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His skin so faded.

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It glows pale from weeks in bed.

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The modeling clear and brown.

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He sips from the cup I hold.

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A salt stain spreads
on the pillow.

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That gaze, which does
not shift to include me

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will not remain tonight as it
has not three nights in a row.

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His fingers go slack, and
it's my pulse in my wrist.

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His features slip the
little white claw, the light

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from the hall, clouds.

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I am kissed dispassionately.

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The pillow grazing my cheek as
he did complacent a last time.

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Tired again, he leaves
me at the edge of dreams

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to sleep where he has died.

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