Ishion Hutchinson

 

Station

The train station was a cemetery. 
Drunk with spirits, another being entered. 
I fanned gnats from my eyes to see into his face. 
I saw father. I looked and shouted, "Father!" 
He did not budge, after thirteen years, neither snow nor train, 
only a few letters, and twice on a cell 
his hoar frost accent crossed the Atlantic. 
I poked his face, his mask slipped as a moment 
in childhood, a gesture of smoke, pure departure.  

Along freighted crowds the city punished, 
I picked faces in the thick nest of morning's 
hard light, they struck raw and stupid, 
and in the dribble of night commuters, 
phantoms, I have never found him. From the almond 
trees' shadows I have looked, since a virus 
disheartened the palms' blossoms and mother  
shaved her head to a nut, gave me the sheaves 
in her purse so he would remember her. 

I was talking fast of her in one of my Cerberus 
voices but he laughed shaking the scales 
of froth on his coat. The station's cold cracked 
back a hysterical congregation, echo and plunder, 
his eyes flashed little obelisks that chased 
the spirits out, and without them, wavering, 
I saw nothing like me. Stranger, father, cackling 
rat, I stood transfixed at the bottom of the station. 
Who was I? Pure echo in the train's beam 

arriving on its cold nerve of iron. Grave, 
exact, the doors breathed open. Father was nowhere 
when I boarded and looked through the glass 
and plunged cold down the shadow chamber 
many wore many strong disguises and none 
spoke or even looked I was there in the box, 
incandescent, becoming half their hush, 
half still in the man's chiseling snarl, louder 
now he was away and I am departing.