Improv: Yusef Komunyakaa “My Father’s Love Letters”

On Fridays he’d be redeemed by a can of Jax after closing his eyes or balling his blackened and broken fists with my mother who never made the swelling go down. They would become roses of hands and his ballpoint pen in his pocket that he used to write orders on blue-lined paper on legal pads and measurements on pieces of yellowed wood used for houses and decks. He’d suck splinters out of his fingers and tell me how to come up in the world.