Father Hunger

              with a line from Louise Glück

You arrived like a gasp

and the world, in my arms

untangled. No longer

do I dream of love; I am.

What felt like a separation

was merely my refusal

of it. I think I understand

now, as I sit by this pool,

that Narcissus might

have been looking for

someone else to blame.

                         As usual, I am willing

                 myself angry. It’s one trait

          I didn’t inherit from my father.

                 It’s a practice, like any old

                  hobby. I can easily forget.

        Without anger, it is all our fault.

        All my life, it has been my fault.

                                               My god,

how artlessly we love when

we believe we are in control.

The first man I conjured I named

Benjamin. I was eight & lonely &

my body one slip of the tongue

after another slipped

into him absolutely,

shaping that old daddy feeling

to which I am constant daughter.

What did the scholar mean

when she said the story is a

diversion?

She meant

                                        from feeling.

                          It is almost beautiful,

                     this cruel love of cruelty.

                     Did I inherit this as I did

                              your tender army?

                                  What I mean is,

                           yes. What I mean is,

               all girls inherit their fathers.

When it is my turn, I am

no longer a girl.

I inherit detachment,

a long time ago—

the death that insists

it is still living. & the men

arrive like symptoms to the disease

only the bestowed can cure, which is

at that point, wholly impossible. But

it didn’t do, did it? Father,

tell me,

                  which one of us will break

       the pact? That you are you and I

         am you. That it was beyond me.

                           Tell me, in the secret

                     language between father

            and daughter, which prevails?

          Which might I have prayed for

            had I known I had the choice?

                    That I am still choosing?

                                                   A life

spent hunting models

of you & all along, the double

was me. Ignorance

wills something imagined

which it believes exists.

Father

                                             hunger—

                  oh, ghost that is no ghost.

  What I wouldn’t give to will a truth

                     more beautiful than you.