The Iowa Review
Volume 17
Issue 1 Winter
Article 22
1987
Looking at a Photograph of My Father at My Age
Jeffrey Skinner
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Skinner, Jeffrey. "Looking at a Photograph of My Father at My Age." The Iowa Review 17.1 (1987): 75-76. Web.
Available at: http://ir.uiowa.edu/iowareview/vol17/iss1/22
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others?), and god knows I no longer blame
the pleasant receptionist who
one hundred
three questions
must
ask
times
a
to return
she wants
day, while
only
to the
for
sexual
attraction
rating
in Redbook; or the manager
doing his best
to rise,
to think,
someday, he trembles
to an enclosed office on
row,
mahogany
his service awards and aged brandy
and elegant in the glass cabinet;
or the ones who believed TV
promises
hushed
and now
sit before
terminals,
pale green
light like a sigh on their faces;
or the guys
trading
in the mailroom,
numbers
half joking, half praying for the combination
thatmight land them in the local paper,
their arm around
a woman
with
an uncertain
smile; or even
ones
the strong willed
each noon from glassy clouds,
the ones who've
learned to say three things
at once without
anger and appear kind,
who
descend
some are
their even teeth?for
showing
one
of them unnatural.
kind, and not
I light a third
keeps me waiting.
The painting
check my watch.
cigarette,
on the
is
wall
before
me, calm,
lobby
right
My
client
inside
easy to look at, so little movement
to describe.
it is impossible
I touch
my forehead and my fingers smear a thin
line of moisture.
Looking
The
The
receptionist
at a Photograph
graying
brushcut
is waving.
of my Father
at My Age
stands up like a warning:
This black andwhite face is square, lean
and dangerous.
Seven years out of the FBI and he
75
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still wears
the SI trenchcoat.
Hands
in pockets,
at a curl
in lips, one eye squinting
cigarette
. . . The
is only partial?
of smoke.
posing
never worked
vice in Harlem
undercover
Bogart
or chased
a racketeer
of Buffalo.
As my
The
hunger
down
a reticence
outweighing
the frozen
streets
is real.
flat cruelty of the mouth
for the tales was real, sometimes
in by Hoover
trained
(whose scary pug face guarded the den wall),
and I'd get one bare bones cops and robbers
Iwanted
before bed. How much
those shoulders!
? Level andwide
enough to hold my sister
one
and me,
one
brandys,
to a side. He'd
do kip-ups,
between
flipping
arm
push-ups
on our Levitt own
lawn, my friends
hamburgers
awed into quiet. This was about the time
I began to withdraw,
amazed to find more
love
for Kipling than hardball. Mixing my Gilbert
in the attic,
chemicals
stroking
a wan
guitar.
. . .
I slip the photograph back under drafts of old
study my face in the bathroom mirror.
to
resemblence
Enough
imagine us as brothers,
the one to step in
perhaps?the
photograph
work,
the reflection
when
caused
a
fight
in some bar.
a little some
compose
might
a sweet poem,
to smooth out the
thing,
photograph's
She'd be touchy, emotional,
shadow
wife.
crisp
Later,
the reflection
to his
strength.
Mum
guardian
of his weakness.
A Grace
Let's
have no more
poems,
and we
So much
76
J remember
at least not until
can move
easily
lunatic pruning
the self thaws
in more
out
than one direction.
in a dead garden,