My father parks what he calls his blonde truck a little too

close

to other cars on the block, to conserve space.

He yells “Hark” when he comes home,

and “Hark,” my mother responds quietly.

She’s reading the paper.

“What is a kiss?” my father asks the dog, who licks his face.

“You don’t know what a kiss is.”

He stretches out on the floor

in front of our television set,

grinding his lower back

onto the coffee table,

waiting for a pop.

At the end of the news hour,

the crew of a space shuttle comes on for an interview.

They try to stay in some approximation

of a seated position,

but they float upwards. One man

has all but given up —

you can see him giggling as

his head bumps the ceiling.

Afterward, the scent of burnt garlic

wafts from the kitchen.

My father’s cooking dinner.

He’s arranged bell peppers over

a pile of ground meat,

a pinwheel he’s proud of, and which he photographs.

“White Sox are on now,”

he says, and the jocular

timbre of the announcer

fills the room like a

familiar friend.

He calls a fly ball

a “can of corn.”

For the first time we’re curious.

“Easy to reach,” my father says.

He plays with the chocolate ice cream

on his spoon, creating a creamy sculpture.

“Can of corn,” he

says in twenty different

voices. He likes it.