Inside his ice cream factory my father would lift me onto a counter
to watch him alchemize salt and cream until it hardened, to sift and bend
and taste, and he said Open up as he placed a whole vanilla bean
in my mouth. I didn’t know what to do with it.
I don’t know many things, like when to call a moon Hunters’,
but I do know when it gets too large to breathe I need to go
back inside and study iconography. I studied my father like a god
I didn’t believe in. His ashy hair. His eyes like mud.
Kristeva said color is a shattering of unity—my father who was a slow kind
of shattering. Men have often chosen me to be the woman
they cry in front of. A museum they can walk into. I’ve held
strangers’ heads in my lap at parties. Turned confessional I was
suddenly wooden and capacious. I was holier than I had ever
been. When a man puts his hand in my mouth, I hope
I can make him cry for me. When the cat drags the rabbit
inside, I can’t help listening for a heartbeat.
Jealous of a god so adored, I took a photograph of every
St. Sebastian in Europe. Arrow through the chest. King of Hearts,
my father’s business. Like men could be bet on, or ruled.