from /The Vents/
the day my dad died my best friend and his family walked around the block
to see if i wanted to go to a pig roast they didn/t know i waited in the car
w/ the windows up the sound of them talking to my mom on the sidewalk
was muffled i looked through the glass at my friend who had a sweet innocent
look on his face “c/mon don/t be like that” my mom said but i didn/t move
i knew i didn/t have to which is another way of saying no one could make me
/ / / /
narcolepsy is the cold blue-white peak of ashley/s personal mental health iceberg
who knows what else lurks under the surface her mom has tourettes and she doesn/t
know her dad she and her sister grew up in houses filled by her mom/s bad taste
in men and the arsenal of abuse they brought w/ them when we saw pearl jam
at the civic center gerry boosted me up to crowd surf to the front of the stage
and looking back through the mob pogoing in unison to “rearviewmirror” i could see
ashley/s limp body held upright by the force of the crowd pushing toward the stage
her hung head bobbed in unison w/ the audience bouncing in time w/ the music
gerry hovered over her to protect her the whole show but the next week she went
weak alone behind the wheel of her grandfather/s car and drove through a fence
across a stretch of lawn and into the waiting arms of perfectly trimmed church hedges
/ / / /
lying on the top bunk half-asleep i could hear him through the vents for years
after the funeral chalk it up to never seeing his body or to social security
checks arriving in the mail and the fact that we seemed better financially w/out him
chalk it up to mem and pep continuing to play his lotto numbers or to growing up
on television shows full of fantasies and deceptions that end one season w/ a fatal
hit-and-run and begin the next w/ the victim in the shower lathering his perfect body
w/out a scratch or scar on it i would hear my dad through the vents visiting
uncle bob/s apartment under the cover of night i would start their conversation
spinning like a top “how/s the kids?” then the exchange would get looser and loonier
until it wobbled to a stop when i dropped to a deeper stage of sleep on the nights
when he came i floated off to sleep on an ocean of murmurs on the nights
when he didn/t come i waited one day i knew the small talk and nonsense
would run dry and he would cut straight to the heart of the matter and say why
*
Craig Blais is the author of Moon News (2021) and About Crows (2013). Chapters from his book-length poem /The Vents/ have appeared or are forthcoming in Another Chicago Magazine, Arts & Letters, Laurel Review, The Moth, Résonance, Salamander, and South Dakota Review. He lives in Massachusetts and teaches at Anna Maria College.