white ice floes in clear blue water Arndt Britschgi

Arndt Britschgi white ice floes in clear blue water

the sea would freeze during the coldest winter months until, in spring, ice floes of white would fill the clear-blue/lead-gray waters of the bay// and in the autumn, in the harbor, house-high waves that hurled their rage across the red-brick, handrailed breakwater where Father used to love to take you walking (my big brother and myself), among the loads of dirt and debris swept ashore, carried away across the edge/ into the seething wet-dock basin’s oil-spilt broth// and late in May the light that’s flooding through the curtains in your room deep in the night while you lie thinking in your bed, your fingers clasped behind your neck, your eyes peeled open willfully; until you’re woken by the starlings’ crazy twittering from the street, not even conscious that you’d gone to sleep before –of having slept till then at all: no, hey, I didn’t sleep, I swear– that’s where I’ll be, that’s where you’ll have to drag your lazy self to find me// long drinking sprees through summers’ nights (the sun at night throwing its shadows where in daytime it would glow), strenuous cold scathing bare cheeks and endless deluges in fall and then the greenness of the birch trees come exploding into life, so strong its brightness cuts a wound into your sight;// and wind-ripped clouds (black hanging shrouds) dragging their weight within hand’s reach,/ and frozen plains of silent expanses of sea and/ merchant ships lying in roads, locked in the frozen-over passage/ broken up by fleets of tugs who grant them access to the quays/ and work-yard whistles, fog-horn outposts blowing warnings days and nights/ and bad diseases which were spread from foreign sailors’ festered cocks/ by would-be prostitutes girl-aged eager to give themselves away, just for the fun (for the experience) or a pack of gum or fags;// and in it all, all in its midst, the hope that springs into our hearts when we come down and see white ice floes as they break in clear blue seas, packing the inlets –when it’s time– filling the whole stretch of the bay

I recently saw my father through a ghost of glass. Unable to fight the urge, I crept past his home, scarlet leaves pasting my tires like crushed and silent tongues unable to betray my trespass. He stood—an enormous tableau of all that I fail to understand. A shock of hair, surprised perhaps at his ability to carry such burden for so many years, angled from his head in hoary geometry. What if I had come around again and knocked at his door? (Refuse as refuse?) (Reject as reject?) Long since discarded, I instead sifted through the rubble of memory. He used to drink Buckhorn Beer in full-throated drags until he learned Olympia Brewing was run by a queer. He once punched my head Through drywall not because I fought my younger brother; rather, because I’d lost. When I came out as trans his phone line crackled— bad connection—his silence forking lightning. My final birthday card encased his closing sentence:

“You’ll never be anything more than a faggot in a dress.” Stepping on the gas, I returned home. Perhaps he recognized his second born and, chastened, raised his hand— but I’ll never know: I too had finally turned away.