PASADENA

PASADENA

Sunk in his chair he is solid as bronze or marble. The rococo pastoral scene, worked on the antimacassar behind his head, is tasteless, mass-produced; an image of Arcadia duplicated on the other chair and three times on the couch. They are all there in the living room where, at fifteen I, unbuttoned, swung from the door like a monkey; my boy’s chest darkening with adolescent hair. Exhausted on the couch, my head thrown back against the eighteenth-century Antimacassar, I look across at my father, his crumpled suit, his hawk-like face, his indescribableness that is soon to pass into history, hardly noticing the crude embroidery that will take the place of his head.