After Surgery, My Father Helps Me Bathe

By ANTHONY BORRUSO

 

Jobless, 26, a ghastly scab marching
         from the base of my skull down

my neck; beside me, my father kneels at the curtained
         threshold with a saucepan of warm

water. Steam obscures the boundaries between
         me and my past self, 6, smiling, slamming

the head of a red power ranger on faded
         ceramic tiles—oblivious, amphibious,

blanched in bathwater. My father sees me
         pruning memories and, politely, turns,

knowing well the subatomic gossip always
         whispering inside our bones. My father,

the policeman, who inhaled god-knows-what when
         the city really didn’t sleep. When who he is now

stepped out from debris like a gray-tarnished twin.
         We are a kind of pentimento. Me and me

and him all living like stubborn
         brushstrokes in a gilded frame.

 

[Purchase Issue 21 here.]

 

Anthony Borruso is pursuing his Ph.D. in creative writing at Florida State University, where he is an assistant poetry editor for Southeast Review. His poems have been published or are forthcoming in The American Journal of Poetry, Pleiades, Spillway, The Journal, THRUSH, Moon City Review, decomP, Frontier Poetry, and elsewhere.

From the beginning, The Common has brought you transportive writing and exciting new voices. We are committed to supporting writers and maintaining free, unrestricted access to our website, but we can’t do it without you. Become an integral part of our global community of readers and writers by donating today. No amount is too small. Thank you!

After Surgery, My Father Helps Me Bathe

Related Posts

A Tour of America

MORIEL ROTHMAN-ZECHER
This afternoon I am well, thank you. / Walking down Main Street in Danville, KY. / The heavy wind so sensuous. / Last night I fell- / ated four different men back in / Philadelphia season lush and slippery / with time and leaves. / Keep your eyes to yourself, yid. / As a kid, I pledged only to engage / in onanism on special holidays.

cover for "True Mistakes" by Lena Moses-Schmitt

Giving the Poem a Body: Megan Pinto interviews Lena Moses-Schmitt

LENA MOSES-SCHMITT
I think sometimes movement can be used to show how thought is made manifest outside the body. And also just more generally: when you leave the house, when you are walking, your thoughts change because your environment changes, and your body is changing. Moving is a way of your consciousness interacting with the world.

Long wooden table with chairs. Plants in the background.

Four Ways of Setting the Table

CLARA CHIU
We are holding the edges of the fabric, / throwing the center into the air. / & even in dusk this cloth / billowing over our heads / makes a souvenir of home: / mother & child in snowglobe. / Yet we are warm here, beneath / this dome, & what light slips through / drapes the dining room white.