Pablo Otavalo
Disoriented
My sister finds my father sitting on the floor
trying to catch his breath, she tells me how
pale he looked, a sickly gray, struggling
to speak. “I thought he was...” “I know,
I know” I interrupt so she doesn’t have
to say it because I, too, can feel the corridor
closing in, “but he's ok” I say, “Yes...yes.”
One yes sadder than the last, and I
can hear the low rumble of an organ filling
a church, climbing its spires. A heavy door
creaks shut, clear winter light pours through
high windows. It’s boxing day, and we are
all struggling to breathe. “Yes ..” we know it,
“yes” the way a room feels empty when full
of cardboard boxes. My father could bloom
orchids, once. “Let him rest” I say. I promise
to call him tomorrow, and tomorrow: A cold
wind blows across empty cornfields, frost
sets into the ground. Beneath the empty
branches of an elm, beneath the leaf litter,
bumblebee queens burrow, and shiver, and
sleep. “Yes” she says, trying not to weep.
My sister finds my father sitting on the floor
trying to catch his breath, she tells me how
pale he looked, a sickly gray, struggling
to speak. “I thought he was...” “I know,
I know” I interrupt so she doesn’t have
to say it because I, too, can feel the corridor
closing in, “but he's ok” I say, “Yes...yes.”
One yes sadder than the last, and I
can hear the low rumble of an organ filling
a church, climbing its spires. A heavy door
creaks shut, clear winter light pours through
high windows. It’s boxing day, and we are
all struggling to breathe. “Yes ..” we know it,
“yes” the way a room feels empty when full
of cardboard boxes. My father could bloom
orchids, once. “Let him rest” I say. I promise
to call him tomorrow, and tomorrow: A cold
wind blows across empty cornfields, frost
sets into the ground. Beneath the empty
branches of an elm, beneath the leaf litter,
bumblebee queens burrow, and shiver, and
sleep. “Yes” she says, trying not to weep.
You Wake Up
for Gregor Samsa
and one day you are a vermin. And
your brother a vermin
and your son is a vermin. And he loses his job
and can’t get out of bed. And you
wake up walking
across a desert. A checkpoint
for vermin. A dangerous fool
reads a book to a crowd
that you are snakes. That your family
should die in a river. Or under
a house or they say you are rats. You wake up
stateless
against a wall or a fence. And they throw
apples
at your wounded body. While it’s a nice day
for Gregor Samsa
and one day you are a vermin. And
your brother a vermin
and your son is a vermin. And he loses his job
and can’t get out of bed. And you
wake up walking
across a desert. A checkpoint
for vermin. A dangerous fool
reads a book to a crowd
that you are snakes. That your family
should die in a river. Or under
a house or they say you are rats. You wake up
stateless
against a wall or a fence. And they throw
apples
at your wounded body. While it’s a nice day
--
Pablo Otavalo is from Cuenca, Ecuador, and now lives and writes in Illinois. His work has appeared in POETRY Magazine, RHINO Poetry, Jet Fuel Review, Structo Magazine, Glass Poetry Journal, No Tender Fences: An Anthology of Immigrant & First-Generation American Poetry, and other publications. We must find what we revere in each other.
Pablo Otavalo is from Cuenca, Ecuador, and now lives and writes in Illinois. His work has appeared in POETRY Magazine, RHINO Poetry, Jet Fuel Review, Structo Magazine, Glass Poetry Journal, No Tender Fences: An Anthology of Immigrant & First-Generation American Poetry, and other publications. We must find what we revere in each other.