“It was one of those moments
you wish you could
marry forever.”
—James Seay
My father, as he pulled
off his beaten shoes and unbuttoned his shirt
after a hard day in the spinning
room, the whistle he would ease through the slit
between his tongue and palate, too tired
to press his lips into the tight o
of the realer whistle whistled Sunday mornings
before the world went bad, the clear,
pure strains of Fraulein called up
from his healing lungs
Beth’s snowflakes,
before she died, how, when she opened
the door to let us in, hundreds
of them she had cut and hung from the ceiling—
sloppy paper flakes spinning above the heat
of the big-bellied stove, unbelievable
soft blizzard of white
the look on Flint’s face,
its sweet incredulity of loss
as if in the telling of the story
he suddenly realized the girl
in the men’s restroom of that New Orleans
oyster house was the one true love of his life,
the way he turned from the urinal
and there she was, pushing him aside
pleading—I’m going to throw up
and I’ll need you to hold my hair—
and, done, she was gone, as he stood there
stunned, still holding his penis,
his other hand cupped tight to his mouth and nose,
breathing in, breathing deep
the still lingering jasmine of her hair.