When My Father Passed Away

This theater is a slaughterhouse

where filaments of grief

are too shifty to cut,

amusing guests who come 

along with gestures

broadly understanding

what brought them in,

inscribing very clearly

associations overhanging

with the deceased.

The bereaved insists on

what needs to be preserved

along fertility lines, which

unkind behavior should

be dismembered.

Here, the propensity

to dissolve a fear

needs to be cleared up.

Relatives are pleased

when a family is associated

with powerful mourners

who leave their traces behind

while those who achieve less

endeavor to fill in lapses

upon this confabulation.

Each capture is overwhelmingly

a litany of performers,

feats and states of play.

At curtain call, the incense

glitters with sugar, salt, rice,

onions, garlic sending off

my father, our most secret

thoughts slumping before

his audience of separations.

Descent

From the top, we illuminate

gestures from a landscape

colonials often describe

as wayward and primitive.

We unveil the colors of birds

and flowers reproducing

movements from romances

and histories to reclaim

previously majestic

grace and fluorescence.

Parasols over brimming

patterns on our skin

receive spectators

with drums, prompting

a memory of cultures

slaughtered, amorphously 

now, covering up a deflection.

We break away from

precedents by uttering

improvisations denoting

eyes and noses

of dismembered figures,

a persistence, ink tones

shining through speed,

modulations strumming

along, framing like scrolls.

At the reception line, we

turn out to be statuesque,

triumphantly convinced

that we convey translucence

like pieces of calligraphy

just as we secretly aspire

to leap out with more potency,

satin and spiderlike

bursting out of this

striptease movement.

Only the finest witchery takes

place in transmissible descent.