Adam Fieled (editor, Philadelphia, USA): "Apparition Poem #1645"
#1645
The father’s gaze
(depending which gaze
The father’s gaze
(depending which gaze
you happen to be
referring to) is panoptic.
It goes in
without leaving traces. So if you
have several
fathers that leave no traces, &
merely invisible
gazes, there is or maybe a
sense in which
you have no fathers. I saw
all this
happening to me, along with every
thing else, many
years ago, before I could
visualize the
cell I was in, before I knew
how the walls
stank of fresh paint, or saw
that I was
getting smeared at any juncture.
But, as I saw
this, my father who was my
father turned,
spoke down to me in such
a way that I
listened. I took what he said,
gazed at my cell,
and watched the paint dry
deep into the
night before I busted out to
watch the dawn
break over the Delaware .
© Adam Fieled 2010