Sugar Town

Sugar Town


My father, my Van Gogh, is crazy
from hunger. He cuts off his ear, loses his foot
to the wildfire of diabetes.

"Amputation must be a form of insanity,"
he tells me, "Because I can still feel my foot."
My father, my Van Gogh, is crazy

from absence. He reaches down in his dreams
to scratch the itch of the missing foot
burned to ash in the wildfire of diabetes

then he mixes that ash with blood, the primary
colors thick, nearly stopped with sugar.
My father, my Van Gogh, is crazy

from genius, as he paints, carefully
filling a canvas with row upon row of sugar
cane burning in the wildfire of diabetes,

as farm workers, those brown men, run fearfully
toward the horizon smudged with smoke and sugar.
My father, my Van Gogh, is crazy
from the wildfire of diabetes.

They took his right foot.

He is less

than what
he was.

He will learn to walk again
balanced on a prosthetic foot, braced on a
permanent crutch.

He will learn to walk again
if he lives long enough to learn.

That night, as he sleeps
in the recovery room, as he shivers
in the hot room, I kiss him
for the first time in decades. I kiss him

and discover his skin tastes sweet.


Asleep with my infant son, I wake up to a noise
somewhere in the dark house. But we are
alone, my son and I, because his mother
my wife, if off to Europe. I have been
frightened in her absence, falling asleep
with my son to make sure he breathes
and of course, he is fine, he continues
to sleep soundly despite my best efforts
to disturb him, as I sit up in bed, in
the dark, and listen, as I hear that noise

again from somewhere inside the house.
I grope around the bed, in hopes of finding
some weapon or something approximating
a weapon. But there is nothing. I am
defenseless there in the dark with my sleeping
son and his mother's absence and the doorway
where a shadow will soon appear, and when
it appears, will it be the Killer of Children, or
the Thief of Babies, or the Saint of Crib Death,
or my father

with his feet bloodied from the hundreds of miles
he has walked to come here, now, to tell me
how much he loves me, how much he loves my son?


Before I became a father
I used to stare at women.

Now, I stare at their children.

What I mean
is this: We pay
attention to what
is missing
only after it
goes away.

No, too abstract.

What I mean is this: in moments of great pain
the general becomes particular.

No, still too abstract.

What I mean is this: When your father loses his foot
you begin to notice other people who have lost their foot.

Of course, I am not
talking about my son
particularly, because he is
innocent. Instead
I will speak of my father
who is guilty of particular sins.


In this dream the knock
on the front door wakes me.

(so I cannot tell if
I am still dreaming
about the knock on the door
or am I responding to a true
knock on the door
that has become a part
of my dream)

and I rush downstairs
and fling the door open.

My father's right foot
stands on the welcome mat.

"No," I say to the foot. "You have the wrong house.
I am Sherman Alexie, Junior.
I am the son."

Disappointed, the foot turns
and walks away, though, of course

I wonder how a foot could do anything else
but walk. After all, isn't the act of walking
the foot's sole reason for existence? Step
after step after step, is my father's foot
traveling away from its original mission,
its birth and myth, its creation story?

I carry my father's name
as I will someday carry his coffin.

Before the surgeon took his foot
my father requested an eye patch
a parrot, and a peg leg.

"A pirate," he said, "I'll be a pirate."

Then I knew where I inherited
the inability to remain serious
between and among injuries.

But wait, in my father's defense, in my defense
I must insist that everything is funny.

For instance, before JFK, Jr. flew into that good night
in a plane too complicated for him to handle, in weather
that grounded more experienced pilots, on a foot
wrapped in a ten-pound cast, did anybody stop to tell him,
"But John-John, you can't defy death, you're a Kennedy?"

And now, in the middle of all this, I see my father
riding in the presidential limousine in Dealey Plaza
on November 22, 1963, but he stands on his head
with his bare feet sticking up into the dangerous
Texas air.

I love my father
with and without, on
and off, reservations. I want
you to know that.

"But Sherman, you can't defy death, you're an Indian."

Parenthood is no miracle.
There is no magic involved.
There is only the rough sandpaper
of faith, the hard work of love, and it is

work, good and true work, but difficult
as hell. Exhausting. So exhausting, it's easy
for a parent to quit for a second, a minute,
maybe a week, before you remember, regain

the concentration and put your shoulder back
to the wheel, and push, push, push.

Once when I had not eaten in twenty-four hours
as I waited for my father to come home
from the hunt for money, any money

I prayed for food, for food!
Could that happen
in the United States of America? Yes, I prayed

for food, and just as I whispered, "Amen"
my father walked in the door
with a large bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken.

To all the vegetarians of the world, I say this:
FUCK YOU.

In case you were wondering, the chicken was extra crispy.

I am gaining weight as I age. I have my father's jowls.
I fight this but secretly hold out the hope
that I will be a handsome fat man.
Now my heart thumps when I run.
I am chasing my father.
I am chasing my father's foot.


Thunder and lightning wakes
my son. I rush
to his room and offer all
the comfort I can give.
My son accepts this. For now
he believes in me
more than he will ever believe
in any god.

That belief in me will change.

But now, in this moment, he quiets.
He inhales, exhales, inhales, exhales.

He sleeps.

In the dark, I hold his small, perfect feet.


I remember when my siblings and I used to hide
my father's booze.
Now we hide the donuts and candy bars.

My earliest memories include a St. Bernard
knocking me off a wood pile, a board game
about the Harlem Globetrotters, a porno movie
at my sister's apartment, and my father's plastic bag
filled with hyperdermic needles and insulin bottles.

My oldest brother weighs over four hundred pounds.
My younger sisters, twins, both weigh
over two hundred pounds.

Indians dance in circles.

Father, every step I take is a wake.

That cry in the night
is my son, is my father.

Both want me to be
a better man than I am.


Sherman Alexie..........from One Stick Song