I was born in 1970.
I spend a month in the hospital,
my father spends six in Nam.
We both come home broken.
We meet a year later;
I’m walking,
he’s crawling,
we’re both on the bottle
shaking our fists.
I’m five years old in 1975.
I wrestle my veteran father
down to a stiff mattress.
I lose my two front teeth.
I can still slip my tongue
between the space he left behind;
my dark hair curled
around his Latin fingers
like tarnished rings.
I’m ten years old in 1980.
I’m smoking crushed butts
salvaged from a glass ashtray.
My little brother thinks it’s funny
to piss in plastic sandwich bags
and drop them out the window.
My mother hits the floor
with two black eyes.
I’m fifteen in 1985.
I’m snorting coke and hauling ass
in a stolen Chevy Nova.
Maria shows me her nipples.
We laugh when I masturbate
under the bed, against the carpet.
My father is like a song
I can’t recall the lyrics
to sing along with.
I’m twenty in 1990.
My father doesn’t recognize
the man pounding at the door.
I lift my mother from the floor
for the very last time.
He can only remember
the baby with the missing teeth,
white cotton briefs
stained with shit.
Angel Zapata was born in NYC, but currently resides just outside of Augusta, Georgia. His flash fiction and poetry has appeared or is forthcoming on Flashshot, Twisted Tongue, Flashes in the Dark, Flash Me Magazine and Membra Disjecta. Last month he won the Dorsal Contest over at Doorknobs & Body Paints. He is husband to his lovely wife of two years and is also father of four hyperkinetic boys obsessed with all things ninja. Please visit his blog: http://www.myspace.com/angeldzapata.
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16 Responses to “5X5 • by Angel Zapata”
Comments
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March 28th, 2009 at 2:38 am
Well! That cheered me up for the weekend.
March 28th, 2009 at 2:47 am
Hey, Angel! A twofer today — Everyday Fiction and Everyday Poets. Congratulations. Well done at both.
March 28th, 2009 at 4:03 am
Very strong, extremely bleak and I loved it.
Axxx
March 28th, 2009 at 4:04 am
Savage, bitter and unforgettable. Littered with lines I wished I’d written myself… A 5. Of course.
March 28th, 2009 at 4:07 am
Wow! That was amazing!
March 28th, 2009 at 5:48 am
Much better piece of prose than the writer’s story today at EDF. Much better and more honest, being about a real self (or selves he’s known about) and has the ring of truth unlike the shallow, hollow story at EDF didn’t, although it is filled with much more hate than this one. This story has merit, woven in pain from the bitter strands of witnessing and experience.
March 28th, 2009 at 7:45 am
A very sad, but well told tale.
–dj
March 28th, 2009 at 8:30 am
You certainly got two winners in today. Congratulations!
March 28th, 2009 at 9:17 am
And of course, you can read more at EDF – also today… Just click on the top right link
March 28th, 2009 at 10:10 am
Very Moving. I especially liked:
“My father is like a song
I can’t recall the lyrics
to sing along with”.
March 28th, 2009 at 2:05 pm
Anne Brooke – I don’t see how this piece can evoke love. There are thousands of other responses from admiration, to shock, to anger to movement to action, whether you thought the writing was good or not.
Angel Zapata – Why is your father like a song? Among the songs sung by “my fathers” were the lines “People hearing without listening; People writing songs which voices never share.”
March 28th, 2009 at 3:22 pm
Powerful, perplexing.
Cheers
Mark
March 28th, 2009 at 8:43 pm
Powerful poem Angel; amazing how you distilled the history of four lives into this poem.
March 29th, 2009 at 2:22 am
write on, that is exactly the way poetry should be, honest, real, so good you can smell it and love it and hate it and chew on it for a while, good, good stuff, well done.
March 29th, 2009 at 7:20 am
I know this was a brutal poem, but thank you for the kind words.
This was a very personal piece for me. There is truth for my life represented here, as well as the history of other friends of mine interwoven in this work.
Anne—
I understand what you meant by your comment.
Roberta—
Why is my father like a song? For me, a song easily transports me back into the moment I first heard it, or what I was going through during that time. There are particular songs I haven’t heard played in years, but the moment I hear them, I instantly remember all the lyrics. My father is like this, “a song I can’t recall the lyrics to sing along with.” During my teenage years, when I thought of him, I could hear the music, but what defined him was something I wanted no part of. The elimination of lyrics was the ability to cut him out of my song, out of my life, and ultimately change the way the music affected me.
March 29th, 2009 at 11:24 am
Angel Zapata – Thank you for the explanation of why your father is “like a song” – because you think much and easily in song.