Rustin Larson

My Father's Hernia

I had a fruit salad for company
a bag of balloons, a sad monkey who wouldn't wake up

I am standing outside Utopia
in my tight army-green swim trunks

strangling a beach towel
the shadows of leaves brushing the clapboards

I have many deposits
of fat on my back and chest though I will tell you it’s pure muscle

I sacrificed my groin in some accident in the navy
or in Chicago lifting a washer up 12 flights of stairs

my legs are familiar white hairless
you'll recognize them as your own when you're 44

I have no neck, I have an appetite
I'm still celebrating the end of the war

the grass is soft here
we'll go to the sailor's emporium for fried clams

and ride the empress after sunset
or maybe the queen or the chief

ride on the bumper cars roller coaster hammer of death
and listen to the Twins play on the radio

in the dark and listen to the lake water still itself
until the light morning breezes something illegible

a matter of myself, the dock spelling itself
plank by plank out over the water