Father as Circular Logic Puzzle
BY CHRISTIAN BUTTERFIELD
amnesia mothered me. my mother married a love-bomb.
bomb theory: twin fuses knotted like busted capillaries.
capillary action means i love you less than i love distance.
distant relatives plan your funeral; i google eulogy vs. elegy?
elegies? form-letter hagiographies will litter your facebook:
face it: the horizon hellbent into helix. i’m just a geneticist.
genetic means inescapable. my mother was a discount houdini.
houdini fathered me. in 1926, he died of chronic invisibility.
invisibility is a type of death. death seeps from my jugulars.
jugulars? i bloody-throat. hemodialysis-tubes tangle to knots.
knot theory: you knotted yourself into a noose named love.
love is amnesia. amnesia huddles between a memory & a muzzle
muzzle is a warning shot. to muzzle is a silencer. so what now?
now, my mother cosplays as shrapnel: self as sting-operation.
operation? i grip the scalper, huff chloroform: war paramedic
paramedics can’t save the body: your bondage, your conquest.
question: could you love me enough to leave and never return?
return flights aren’t cheap. the distance is never the absolution.
solution? try cartography. a terrain is a monument to its trauma.
trauma knotted me into an elegy named son. or was it a eulogy?
eulogy: you are still my son — your facebook DM, elegy of vanity.
vanity is a mirror. tell me. which self do you see in my wreckage?
wreckage fathered me. you bullseyed your casket, our infinite x:
x-chromosomes, ex-husband, ex-father, ex-son exiled to y-axis.
y-axis is vertical ascent is we’re liars, all pretending you zig-
zagged, bullshitted your way into heaven. but i resist amnesia.
amnesia mothered me. my mother married a love-bomb.