Visiting Hour Revelations

It’s a shock to my system
every time I look into his face
and see mine staring back at me,
telling me his entire
life story in as long as a visit
to Chino Men’s Prison will allow,
stories he never told my mother,
and piece by piece I put together
a childhood puzzle that went
unsolved. His tears move me
to put my hand on his shoulder
to tell him I’m here with him now,
ready to gather the broken pieces
between us and force them
at gunpoint to answer every
question that’s haunted us—
I push him in his wheelchair
around the blacktop in circles
while the guards watch from
a distance as he whispers
every last one of his secrets,
and I listen to my broken father
with an open, wounded heart
of holes that have begun to fill.

Kevin Ridgeway’s latest book is “Death of the Coppertone Girl” (Luchador Press).  His work has appeared in Hiram Poetry Review, New York Quarterly, Gargoyle, Slipstream, Chiron Review, Nerve Cowboy and Talking River Review, among others.  He lives and writes in Long Beach, CA.