My Father Spreading Mayonnaise

Painting by Fred Neveu

My Father Spreading Mayonnaise

My father spreading mayonnaise with a fork.
My father calling me sugar.
My father jumping off the tractor,
lifting me from the hard clumps of dirt where I fell,
too scared to cuss me.
My father in the kitchen,
reading as the sun comes up.
My father always carrying a rifle in his truck
to shoot snakes as he cuts levees.
My father pushing my mother
and then standing over her, scared.
My father taking his mother out of the hospital
by force so she could die at home.
My father asking how old I am.
My father catching me stealing from his wallet.
My father glaring at me
and my shoulder-length hair at his sister’s funeral.
My father falling out of his truck, drunk,
and rolling down the hill.
My father lying on the couch for three days in DT.
My father telling me he loves me.
My father on the couch,
uncomfortable in my apartment.
My father in his fuzzy house shoes,
calling my fiancée sweetie.
My father drinking champagne in the rice field
and listening to big band music.
My father carrying his son in law through the house
by the throat after seeing bruises on my sister.
My father meeting his illegitimate daughter
in a soybean field and taking her fishing.
My father sending me hundred dollar bills
through the mail.
My father walking through the woods quietly,
with a gun but not hunting.
My father flirting with the girls
at the grocery store.
My father’s picture that looks
like a young Ronald Reagan.
My father in uniform, on a ship to Japan.
My father at Nagasaki.
My father in a suit at his brother’s funeral.
My father refusing to go to the hospital.
My father’s red skin and black hair going gray,
his legs, blue and veined,
his breath steaming in winter.
My father’s smell of rain.
My father quoting Shakespeare while skinning fish.

C.L. Bledsoe

Posted over on The Dead Mule
From his Chapbook==MY MOTHER MAKING DONUTS