What Was Left of the Sestina after Looking at a Photo Album
of My Father’s Squadron
by Brad Trumpfheller
A better son would be able to name these men.
I have named each violence for whatever it does
with its hands: half wave; shaking; holding
a gun; peace sign; a man in the arms
of a man, carried like a husband might carry
his husband. & my father is there. Laughing
at this impossible wedding. When I came out
to him, he thought I was joking. Disbelief
can be a crown of dust. The photographs look
like objects worth devoting myself to:
covered in dust, pious as light
or a desert turned kingdom by the nameless
men. A crown, when divorced from the head,
is a circle of dusty light. Laughter, uncomplicated
from the subject, can become the absence of –
my head, full of desire, could be the subject
of queens. The photographs, a desert
of fathers, country blindfolded
with hands. A crown, uncomplicated
from its kingdom, can look like anything
you want. My father can call a war a war, a queen
a queen, the photographs nothing more than
the dead light
laughing hourglass
becomes desert , kingdom
hands queen
violence the subject
the crown object
this devotion
Oh, today I am impossible
& headless.
I have named each violence for whatever it does
with its hands: half wave; shaking; holding
a gun; peace sign; a man in the arms
of a man, carried like a husband might carry
his husband. & my father is there. Laughing
at this impossible wedding. When I came out
to him, he thought I was joking. Disbelief
can be a crown of dust. The photographs look
like objects worth devoting myself to:
covered in dust, pious as light
or a desert turned kingdom by the nameless
men. A crown, when divorced from the head,
is a circle of dusty light. Laughter, uncomplicated
from the subject, can become the absence of –
my head, full of desire, could be the subject
of queens. The photographs, a desert
of fathers, country blindfolded
with hands. A crown, uncomplicated
from its kingdom, can look like anything
you want. My father can call a war a war, a queen
a queen, the photographs nothing more than
the dead light
laughing hourglass
becomes desert , kingdom
hands queen
violence the subject
the crown object
this devotion
Oh, today I am impossible
& headless.
Brad Trumpfheller is an undergraduate student at Emerson College. Their writing has appeared in Winter Tangerine, the Nashville Review, Assaracus, and elsewhere.
