"Awaken"

By Claudia Savage

Hawthorne Fellow 2012

 

 

Claudia Florence Savage has been awarded residencies at the Atlantic Center for the Arts, Jentel, and the Ucross Foundation, published a chapbook, The Last One Eaten: A Maligned Vegetable's History, and was recently named a finalist for the New Issues Press first book award.

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Awaken 

My father asks for happy poems. He pleads, "write me as you remember." But he doesn't know what I remember. Darkness as jailer.

 

My father's exile. In the bedroom for days. Lights off, shades down, my brother's army men outside the door. Reconnaissance for the sun. 

 

Blame the dark. Darkness can upend you. 

It is not my story. My father at three, locked in a closet. Voice swallowed. Sight stolen. Darkness as hunger.

 

Stop me before I remember. The caves in California. Father behind me. Mother beside. The guide blew out his lantern. Quick darkness, quick. Above the other children snickering. A wailing. The rock, my father. As conduit. We did not run. Reached toward the unknown animal. 

 

I want to avenge him. 

 

I remember Rockefeller Center on my father's shoulders. The crowd cacophonous bees reaping Christmas honey. Animals roasting the spit of 5th Avenue. Chestnuts popping their outer coverings. 

 

That massive tree. Atlas bearing the world's troubles. Ice skaters swirling the air to ribbons. A switch. A sigh.Together. Father look. The light.

 

 

 

 

 

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