{"id":14366,"date":"2022-09-09T08:14:38","date_gmt":"2022-09-09T06:14:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/?p=14366"},"modified":"2022-09-08T08:16:07","modified_gmt":"2022-09-08T06:16:07","slug":"poems-by-peter-mladinic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/?p=14366","title":{"rendered":"poems by Peter Mladinic"},"content":{"rendered":"

As I Look in the Glass <\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Comedians are getting attacked on stage,<\/p>\n

sailors are committing suicide on ships.<\/p>\n

As I type this, one of my best friends<\/p>\n

is undergoing a triple-bypass.\u00a0 Hard times<\/p>\n

for many, good times for others.\u00a0 Look<\/p>\n

on the reality side, I tell myself, as I think<\/p>\n

to look in the mirror.\u00a0 Forest fires rage,<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

turn cabins to cinders, cows drown,<\/p>\n

flowers in a vase wither on an altar.<\/p>\n

In a corner with only mattress on the floor<\/p>\n

a young woman tells a slightly older man<\/p>\n

No, her arms crossed over her face.<\/p>\n

I recall one late morning: a young woman<\/p>\n

behind a counter, with dark good looks,<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

at an animal shelter tells me, \u201cThat haircut<\/p>\n

makes you look younger.\u201d A fresh flat-top.<\/p>\n

I, a man doing all I can to stay above ground<\/p>\n

to help animals, wonder, Should I keep<\/p>\n

my hair a flat-top or grow it out?<\/p>\n

As fires rage, as, in some city a homeless<\/p>\n

man on a bench is kicked awake by<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

a drug-addled youth, as flowers wither<\/p>\n

on an altar, as a woman holds up her arms<\/p>\n

in defense, and, in a city far from where I<\/p>\n

am typing this, bodies lie in a street.<\/p>\n

On both sides stand houses: crumbled<\/p>\n

roofs and walls, doors off hinges, broken<\/p>\n

glass of windows blown out by a blast.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Being a Father<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

1.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Daddy Practice is doing it with love:<\/p>\n

getting up every two hours at night<\/p>\n

and holding the name of your unborn son.<\/p>\n

Daddy practice: the words she won\u2019t understand<\/p>\n

the first time you show Roberta, your daughter,<\/p>\n

a river.\u00a0 If you hear a lake loon and say<\/p>\n

\u201clisten,\u201d she\u2019ll know by then the loon\u2019s cry.<\/p>\n

You blow over the top of a spoonful of broth you\u2019ll spoon<\/p>\n

into her small mouth.\u00a0 You\u2019ll be the audience<\/p>\n

as he, your son, says \u201cMama,\u201d his two syllable<\/p>\n

Gettysburg Address. You\u2019ll leave<\/p>\n

him, later, in a room where he pledges an oath,<\/p>\n

takes a train to a camp and then boards a plane<\/p>\n

that lands in a war zone.\u00a0 She\u2019s thirteen<\/p>\n

and no girl scout, somebody you thought<\/p>\n

you knew.\u00a0 A cinder in her eye brings a tear,<\/p>\n

but not yours.\u00a0 You\u2019re a practicing daddy,<\/p>\n

a stranger, someone she doesn\u2019t understand.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

2.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

It\u2019s like nothing else you\u2019ve ever done.<\/p>\n

Still, you say it\u2019s like practicing to fly<\/p>\n

and land; first you must get the plane<\/p>\n

up in the air and through the clouds.<\/p>\n

The bouquet you give a friend recovering<\/p>\n

from hip replacement you give over and over.<\/p>\n

In tree shade, at an iron pump, for practice<\/p>\n

you cup your hands and drink the water.<\/p>\n

You name two sailboats on the lake, and name<\/p>\n

trees behind you as you stand alone on shore.<\/p>\n

This is Lake Michigan, then Lake Calhoun<\/p>\n

and then Lake George and eventually<\/p>\n

Last Lake, as there will be a last bouquet<\/p>\n

and a last face you see before you shut down,<\/p>\n

with your son Robert holding your hand<\/p>\n

and Roberta talking in the doorway with Doctor Phelps.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

3.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

It\u2019s like batting practice or learning to pitch<\/p>\n

low and inside, and yet it\u2019s not.\u00a0 A child whines<\/p>\n

and whines.\u00a0 Shut the hell up,<\/p>\n

you feel like saying; then soft, tender things.<\/p>\n

You don\u2019t want Robert,<\/p>\n

when he\u2019s grown, to say \u201cI never knew him,<\/p>\n

though we lived together eighteen years<\/p>\n

and he picked me up and carried me<\/p>\n

on his shoulders and held me there, closer<\/p>\n

to heaven, as he spoke to a man outside<\/p>\n

a red cottage with a green roof.\u00a0 He loved<\/p>\n

my mother, but rarely showed it.\u201d<\/p>\n

You don\u2019t want Robert or Roberta saying that.<\/p>\n

So you practice to get the thing right,<\/p>\n

or wrong as few times as possible.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

4.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the one thing you can\u2019t practice for.<\/p>\n

Once a father always a father,\u201d<\/p>\n

your mother tells your aunt. These sisters<\/p>\n

who were mothers speak<\/p>\n

from the grave.\u00a0 Part of the immense<\/p>\n

invisible.\u00a0 At night you look at stars<\/p>\n

and can\u2019t convince yourself they\u2019re up there.<\/p>\n

Their husbands were fathers who practiced<\/p>\n

at the keyboard of vast mistakes made by<\/p>\n

any father: the father of our country,<\/p>\n

the father of American poetry,<\/p>\n

the father of failure standing at a mirror<\/p>\n

knotting his tie.\u00a0 Not yet a homeowner,<\/p>\n

Robert\u2019s going to a dance where he\u2019ll dance with<\/p>\n

a doll-size invisible shape. Or this:<\/p>\n

he dances with your name,<\/p>\n

carries it smartly across the floor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I Look in the Glass   Comedians are getting attacked on stage, sailors are committing suicide on ships. As I type this, one of my best friends<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1569,77],"tags":[1570,1123,1587],"class_list":["post-14366","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-egophobia-73","category-english","tag-egophobia-73","tag-english","tag-peter-mladinic"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6DakB-3JI","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14366"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14366\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14367,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14366\/revisions\/14367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}