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MEN ONLY
The pair wore red cotton pajamas,
the standard uniform for two single men.
They devoured cheeseburgers like water
and treated cars as if they were newborn babies.
The father a recent bachelor again
and his son, Francis, momentarily missing a mother.
The father spent the hot days
hunched over a flaming machine,
making neat lines on wavy roads.
As he toiled through his repetitiously mind-numbing task
he daydreamed of his children.
The one he did see and the few he did not.
He never claimed to be the best father
but wouldn’t own up when the mothers told
him he was the worst.
His children were scattered in a few places,
cared for by a very few women. He saw them
occasionally or not at all.
The face of his son he knew well by now.
For the past six years he had been watching the boy grow.
Each day he discovered something newly amazing about the child
whether it was a new freckle,
or the mysterious bump on his earlobe,
or the nervous giggles that the boy released when being chastised.
He loved him but he could not keep him.
It was unnatural for the man to not have
his children spread out. The law spoke to him
through a letter. It told him the boy could no longer stay.
/...child’s best interest is to be with his biological mother...”
Miami wouldn’t be so terrible for a child with his energy.
When the father finally arrived home from work,
bounding up the front stairs far after the sun had gone down.
The boy’s eyes would shine brighter than the recently departing
sun.
He was already suited up in checkered cherry.
The father picked up his son, tossed him over his shoulder
tickling the boy into fits of laughter.
Outside to the garage, butts on the brown leather seats
of the polar bear white -67 Corvette.
The boy baffled by the sudden trip, so late at night
in his pajamas. They drove with the top down, burgers in hand,
and ignored the speed. The man wouldn’t let the law interfere just
yet.
- Jillian Anzalone
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