This morning I saw the back of my husband’s father’s head and he just risen from sleep was keen on the picture window first which was how a gray cowlick—
Every Comb in the House
a whorl of hair ironed upward—let me see the boy he once was. I’d tried to spot that boy before. I’d studied the snapshot kindergartener but he winced just as the shutter yawned and the Dutchman running the shop was not prodigal. He printed the photo as it was and hung it up front where it may or may not have
Jane Zwart for Abel
curried local favor. In the meantime the blurry kid emigrated. So did decades before he turned tourist and came back and there it still was in the camera-shop’s window. How quickly he bought the likeness, my husband’s father, how quickly he pocketed the gray boy with unfocussed eyes and wooden shoes and then hung him in the hall—it’s a story he likes telling. But I didn’t buy the likeness. Every year for his Christmas my father-in-law asks only for black socks bought cheap or for birdseed. Once a border agent split the bag of millet
Winter 2022
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