Toi Derricotte

my dad & sardines

my dad's going to give me a self
back.
I've made an altar called
"the altar for healing the father & child,"
& asked him what I could do
for him so he would
do nice for me. he said I should stop
saying bad things about him &, since
I've said just about everything bad
I can think of &, since...well,
no, I change my
mind, I can't promise
him that. but even healing is
negotiable, so, if he's in
heaven, or trying
to get in, it wouldn't hurt
to be in touch. the first thing I want is to be able to
enjoy the little things again--for example, to stop peeling
down the list of things I
have to do &
enjoy this poem, enjoy thinking about how, scouring
the cupboards, I found a
can of sardines that
must be five
years old &, since I was home after a long
trip & since it was 1 a.m. & I hadn't eaten
dinner & since there was no other
protein in the house, I cranked it open &
remembered that
my dad loved
sardines--right before bed--with
onions & mustard. I can't get into my
dad's old heart, but I remember that look on his
face when he would load mustard on a saltine, lay a little
fish on top, & top it with a juicy slice
of onion. then he'd look up at me from his soiled
fingers with one eyebrow
raised, a rakish
grin that said--all
for me!--as if he was getting away
with murder.

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Toi Derricotte's most recent books are Tender (Pitt Poetry Series, 1997) and The Black Notebooks (W. W. Norton, 1997). She is the cofounder of Cave Canem, the workshop for African American poets. contents | previous | next