Howard Mueller's Father

Howard Mueller's Father

When I talk about Mueller's father

I'm talking about a closed-up man,

a man all knuckles and eyes,

a body-guard my older brother said

for someone big in Vegas and Reno.

I'm talking about the fear

of answering him

incorrectly when we would

see him in the mornings

at Canter's Deli

a giant at the counter,

always in that navy blue suit,

asking why Howard wasn't with us,

or was Howard's girlfriend o.k?

And we nodded and bull-shitted him

never saying a thing obviously

about Howard's "girlfriend"

who he socked once we were sure of,

and who he forced drunk one night

and that too we kept quiet about.

I'm talking about the dread of looking

at his eyes-that he might detect

and resent the fear I had of him,

because I heard how he was stoned

and how Howard's mood

had bugged him, and Howard

got smacked for it, spraying

blood over the stove. And some

of the ones who had fathers

or step-fathers nodded like

they knew it in their own way

when it was told.

When I talk about Mueller's father

I'm talking about that Buick Electra midnight

blue with cadillac engine

which was a "gift,"

I'm talking about his wife who never

came out when we were over,

and who was once

"a chorus-line beauty,"

and about the apartment

they lived in where Howard slept

on a cot, and that

it was "temporary."

When I talk about Mueller's father

I'm talking about the fork that always

looked stubbed in his hand,

and about his eyes, those little scourged

crusts of ink-I'm talking about

that whole body of a man

who could adjust a fifteen year old boy

to the kitchen floor, cut him right

at the entrance to himself entering,

or answering back, against his will.

Nine years out of that neighborhood

and I saw Mueller's father

in a shabby place I had to stay

overnight in between cities:

two rows of three mattresses each

upon the spills and burns

of a concrete floor,

in a room about 20 X 20. Yet he

was the real filth. But I begin

to lose ambition in depicting him,

or I'm too bitter that he

could return and be around

where I had to sleep; or that

I had re-entered his world,

or never left. And I watched him,

not saying anything, unrecognized

by him as he went about with his function

to rent mattresses and to offer

no paper in his toilet.

Copyright World Poetry, Incorporated Jul/Aug 1996
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved