THE ROCKY CLIFF I CLIMB
Nicca Ray © 2011
-1-
His second son brought us a canary that shivered to death overnight on Christmas Eve 1966. The son, the bird, the connection to father. The Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. The Trinity slips through my fingers.
-2-
He talks about Strasberg I’ve tasted Stroganoff. He lights a chunky white cigarette I steal one from the blue box with clouds as he turns his back on me.
-3-
My father is the king sitting on a throne behind crystal beads. He wears velvet and jewels and eats giant-sized drumsticks. He is the emperor without clothes. He is where the wild things are. He’s the Grinch who stole Christmas. He is Fred Flintstone. I am Pebbles. His pride and joy. He’s Robert Young in Father’s Knows Best. I’m Kitten. He’s Darren Stevens. I am Tabitha. He’s Robin Hood. Zorro. He’s the prince waking me from a restless sleep. The Tooth Fairy. Santa Claus. The Three Wisemen.
-4-
The man who claimed to be a stranger here dies on film instead of bed I visit him in the screening room not the hospital Post Mortem. Afraid of the hole in my stomach. Waiting for his second coming rescuing me from this uncertainty of self.
-5-
You are my oxygen tank.
-6-
Is this why I can’t breathe?
-7-
Photographs of James Dean in that red jacket make me curl into a ball stare ahead I wasn’t born yet.
-8-
You are the seaweed in the whitewash tangling me under foot.
-9-
A rainy night. A crowded auditorium. Sal Mineo. The Observatory. Your name across the screen. The time has come for your un-burial. I read books, knock on doors, call people I don’t know who knew you who never heard of me, I collect, I mark down. I am a hamster in a wheel embodying the encyclopedia of you.
-10-
His mother and three older sisters doted on him. After his father died his mother hid and/or destroyed any remnants of him. Nick became uncontrollable and was sent to live in Chicago with his sister Ruth who eventually had a granddaughter who I have met and who sends me Kienzle family heirlooms. Kienzle not Ray was my father’s real last name. I have eyes like Ruth, a face like her daughter, Karen’s, and calves like his sister, Helen, who has a daughter named Gretchen who I have talked with on the phone. What do I know about this man who never seems to really die that hasn’t been told before? A girl can turn her father into God to spare her from his abandonment; discover facts of his life that transform him into a mortal; face truths that spark moral judgments amongst those who don’t understand the depths to which he sacrificed to live an artist’s life.
-11-
You ask me where my anger is it has been an implosion a roar unbearable restlessness.
-12-
Sometimes people tell me they see your face in mine your gestures the way you pause between words I no longer need to breathe your air I am constantly in search of God but am wary of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.