Photography © Chad Parenteau

 

Immortality granted by 18-wheel chicken truck

Feathers falling like snow on the summer highway that night,
and somehow a survivor in a Volkswagen Beetle
who’d drunkenly crossed-paths with a westbound 18-wheeler
stacked high with wooden crates, broilers bound
for processing. You, too drunk to drive. Too liquid to die.

The only possible conclusion drawn next day
sober in a neck brace: an advanced degree in immortality
conferred. Survival of the fatuous? An arbitrary army
of angels tossing feathers to deny chance and Mallarme?
Or a fate miscarried? The facts are you lived

and 30 years later thrive. Dead though you may be
since I lost contact with your eldest daughter
whose wine store I frequented, not daily.
That you might be alive I know and accept
though I know also the family history.
As I know your hardcore determination to live.

You remarried; a woman 30 years younger.
Fathered another child, a girl. Sang in the choir
with said wife. And continued onward, outward,
content to be relieved of academia and its blood-sucking
demands. Feather-free at last. Your daughter by now
an adult. Inspired by the fables of Joyce, or Blake.
By whoever and whatever fountained from your memory.
What you held close. What fed you in survivalist exile.
And know I know more. A stroke has taken your voice.

The one that lectured or lured, lassoed and seduced.
But oddly, amazingly, did not limit your ability to sing.
Alive, you continue to re-Joyce. To father further,
and be present in your absence. I celebrate your will to be,
the Blake you devoured and turned to muscle and flesh,
the Pound, Yeats, the others who gave you succor,
demons who consoled and forgave, priests who ministered,
and angels you masterfully defrocked. Live on, I say. Always.

 
 
Richard Weaver is the writer-in-residence at the James Joyce Pub in Baltimore. Other pubs: conjunctions, Southern Quarterly, Birmingham Arts Journal, Coachella Review, FRIGG, Hollins Critic, SPQ (2022), Atlanta Review, Dead Mule, Vanderbilt Poetry Review, and New Orleans Review. He’s the author of The Stars Undone (Duende Press, 1992), and wrote the libretto for a symphony, Of Sea and Stars (2005). He was one of the founders of the Black Warrior Review and its Poetry Editor for the first four years. Recently, his 204th prose poem was accepted since he began writing them in 2016. (Only 353 remain available as of today).

Chad Parenteau is Associate Editor of Oddball Magazine.