Specter
By Audrey Gradzewicz
for Lauren B.
In a diagram of my body in which violence
is pinned to my left ventricle, my father stalks
the red-tiled hallways of my heart as a clock
with a bruised face chimes mourning! Over
the broken minutes of childhood, my father
confesses: I hung a man from a tree,
and every part of me tries to become the sh
at the end of hush, tries to open to a silent,
unmaimed world where the man my father killed
smiles mutely at me, traces his jawbone
with his thumb to sign girl and I ache
for the cradled arms that would complete
the sign for daughter. Even the ghost
of a ghost is terrified to claim me. Last night,
when a man hurt my friend, I imagined his spine
as a stick I could break and break, wanted
to beat him into a sadness I could bury
in my hands. But how else to say I love you
than become a charging bull? Even the earth
retreats from the tenderness of snow.