My Father's Love Letters -- Yusef Komunyakaa

Guest poem sent in by Sashidhar Dandamudi

(Poem #1290) My Father's Love Letters On Fridays he'd open a can of Jax After coming home from the mill, & ask me to write a letter to my mother Who sent postcards of desert flowers Taller than men. He would beg, Promising to never beat her Again. Somehow I was happy She had gone, & sometimes wanted To slip in a reminder, how Mary Lou Williams' "Polka Dots & Moonbeams" Never made the swelling go down. His carpenter's apron always bulged With old nails, a claw hammer Looped at his side & extension cords Coiled around his feet. Words rolled from under the pressure Of my ballpoint: Love, Baby, Honey, Please. We sat in the quiet brutality Of voltage meters & pipe threaders, Lost between sentences . . . The gleam of a five-pound wedge On the concrete floor Pulled a sunset Through the doorway of his toolshed. I wondered if she laughed & held them over a gas burner. My father could only sign His name, but he'd look at blueprints & say how many bricks Formed each wall. This man, Who stole roses & hyacinth For his yard, would stand there With eyes closed & fists balled, Laboring over a simple word, almost Redeemed by what he tried to say. -- Yusef Komunyakaa

Notes:

[1] The recent poem submitted by Jasmina (Poem #1288: Amanda Townsend),
made me remember this poem which I had read a few weeks ago in Komunyaaka's
Pulitzer Prize winning collection "Neon Vernacular". It deals with the same
pieces of conflict and agreement between men and women.

[2] The whole poem seems to be structured in a very beautiful way around
brutality (beat her, claw hammer, pressure of my ballpoint pen, five pound
wedge, concrete floor) and tenderness (desert flowers, Polka Dots and
Moonbeams, sunset, roses & hyacinth) to reflect how the narrator is
similarly caught between the same kind of feeling towards his father. Can't
do anything better than that!

[3] I was also suprised that Komunyakaa was missing from the Minstrels
pantheon! I think he is a great poet, who has written some powerful poetry,
the notable being of his experiences as a black journalist serving in
Vietnam War. So I belive we might consider adding this missing link.

joy!
Sashi

[Bio] [broken link] http://www.ibiblio.org/ipa/komunyakaa/bio.html
[Other Poems] http://www.ibiblio.org/ipa/komunyakaa/