My Father Wore Another Man’s Pants

by Rocco Gabriel Sementelli

You do not go gently, you—
you titan     of automotive industry.
Your gyrations, the centre force,
cold steel Cintas blue.
How Undone / Unfixed /Unbroken
your hands now, gnarls like knolls,
knuckles spun counter-sync, unsunk,
as weaving they through electric wires,
as swimming they through untold currents.
Your legacy dies in the veins of those palms,
crossed desert trails and oil slicks,
the stains of your accomplishment
in perfect harmony to the bulge of
your hollowed biceps, defiant orbs which
rage into the night, which rage—into the           night.
I miss you already, father.
And how in an IKEA, in the winter of your years,
you threw box onto box,
one-handed, as if this world could not contain you,
some sad giant whose reach overshadowed the yellows and
blues of this too gone world; a forgotten
god
in      his    ownright.
Goddamn.—how swallowed still are these tears in my throat
How shaken shook, how shaken, shook.

Rocco Sementelli currently works as an applications analyst, but continues to write in his free time. In his past career as a high school literature and language teacher, Rocco became enamored with words, and the space they create between cognition and reality. Rocco’s two cats, Gordita and Chalupa, continue to promote his literary career through their excellent dictation skills.

Image Credit: “The Presorted Lower Class,” Brett Stout