by which I mean, suitcase, by which I mean
my father, who is like a pancake
or a sugarless plane ticket:
Flat, such that the boarding
of him’s near-natural, all neutral,
shirt falling unheeded from neck to nip to
slender hip. Implores he: can you
please, for me,
take several serviceable
photographs, just me against the
pusyellow wall!
Right between the crap’s cradle and washerdryer
against the carnation doorframe,
amidst the pantry packs of Sweet Baby
Ray’s and the uncovered onions so
aking and soaked by fridgefumes?
Anyway I’m all okay
well lemme see, stand up so
your butt’s against the unimposing knob.
Be sure to unimpede your chest. Now watch
muscles go breakneck on their
runner’s ribs. He shutters: Take the picture,
Headcase! mouth
an old and gaseous thing.
Cat emerges from the crapbox
shakes litter from its tail.
This is my father, still, a round
ed scarab:
chiseled, alive, worthless,
entire kitchens of wronghood.
I heard ribs
are remarkable, that is, ought
to say something.
I heard, when you really think about it,
the fridge is nothing but a graveyard.
Heard most families are just
ditches nothing grows too big from.
Headcase, I am living
proof! Oh picture, he cannot help
but shimmer like tar.
[sarah] Cavar is a PhD student, writer, and critically Mad transgender-about-town, and serves as managing editor at Stone of Madness Press and founding editor of swallow:tale press. Author of three chapbooks, A HOLE WALKED IN (Sword & Kettle Press), THE DREAM JOURNALS (giallo lit), and OUT OF MIND & INTO BODY (Ethel Press, forthcoming 2022), they have also had work in Bitch Magazine, Disability Studies Quarterly, Electric Literature, The Offing, and elsewhere. Cavar lives online at www.cavar.club and tweets @cavarsarah.
