For my Father who is not Dead by Michelle Hartman

      After Andrew Hudgins (a retelling) 

One day I’ll receive the call  
to be told my father’s caught. 

With his past due 
four-hundred-year span, he brags 
about the pleasures beyond this world’s 
limits, his lack of reservations mark 
history.  I think he wants 
forever, a big red bow. 

A new desire 
to drink politics straight, taste 
for blue blood.   
He desires me to follow him 
wrap me in his arms and bite 
the way he did my mother 
at my birth.  I cannot take his path. 

He’s eager, but I am not done with sun 
can’t say goodbye to gardens, friends 
as if taking a gap year. 
He thinks to make my travels go well  
but I see myself alone, sinking 
watching him writhe and scream 
     as the wood is driven in 
          and the flames consume 

Michelle Hartman is the author of four poetry books, four chapbooks, the most recent a winner of the John and Miriam Morris Memorial Chapbook Contest. Her work has appeared in Crannog, Galway Review, The Atlanta Review, Penumbra, Poem, Southwestern American Review, Carve and many more.  She is the former editor of Red River Review, as well as the owner of Hungry Buzzard Press.