Back of the door to his dark closet,
eye height, with clever steel
pegs I could flip both ways.
A row of pendulums. Of tongues.
Words, wordless. Witnesses
waiting to be sworn. The town secret.
A silk body, a man's plenty.
A wild ache, a knot. One painted
with gold mums, one with blood
leaves on mud. Vishnu's skin, twenty
shades of sky. White flag iris.
Slick sheen of a greenblack snake.
Which one went with him into the hole?
Somewhere else: his belts.

About This Poem
"My father dressed in conformity with his conservative views. The neckties I loved to gaze at were a kind of hidden wealth, like the dazzling color plates in 'The Arabian Nights,' a book he'd given me. He was generous and repressive, sensuous and puritanical, encouraging and frightening. Time has deepened my sense of his complexity-whatever I think I know of others, much remains a mystery."
-Joan Larkin

About Joan Larkin
Joan Larkin is the author of "Blue Hanuman" (Hanging Loose Press, 2014). Recently the 2012-2015 Grace Hazard Conkling writer-in-residence at Smith College, she lives in West Orange, N.J.

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The Academy of American Poets is a nonprofit, mission-driven organization, whose aim is to make poetry available to a wider audience. Email The Academy at poem-a-day[at]poets.org.


(c) 2016 Joan Larkin. Originally published in Poem-a-Day, www.poets.org. Distributed by King Features Syndicate