Christina Hauck
My Father’s Heart
Every organ fails. Liver enlarged. Lungs clotted.
He coughs and coughs and never clears the clabber.
His heart. I see how it aches there, stiff in his chest.
He holds hand to temple, remembers his ghosts,
Mother and Father, alley cats both, never home.
How he got the scar on his arm. Uncle Woody hanging
in the kitchen. That kicked over chair. But talking like this
resurrects grief and now he can’t stop blurting out
everything he’s tried to forget, the bloodied horse,
the endless war. The little dog Spot. Oh Spot.
Tries to drown with gin, shroud with smoke,
the suddenly loud undeniable mortal hurt.
“As a teenager, my father served in the Pacific as a bombardier (1945). I believe this experience left him with undiagnosed PTSD, which contributed to his alcoholism and efforts to control all aspects of his environment. Of all the poems I’ve written about our difficult relationship, this is far and away the most tender, and reflects my ability to see him, at the end of his life, as a wounded and often desperate human being.” —Christina Hauck
Christina Hauck is a fifth generation Californian who moved to Kansas in 1994 and never looked back. She is a retired English professor (KSU, Manhattan) living in Lawrence (small blue dot, big red sea) with her wife, two cats, and one dog (who basically runs the house). She has published poetry in a number of small journals, most recently in Monterey Review. She has poems forthcoming in Coal City Review, Stone Circle Review, and Street Light Magazine.