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 I Revisit My Father’s Rooms at His Home in Alaska

by Sarah Carey


including the living, a solarium, the dining,

absent a table. The remodeled shower for easy access

had a window overlooking bushes thick


with raspberries my sister and I picked,

ate right there in the yard soon after the break-up,

found nothing like sweet Florida’s.


I freeze-frame the glacial way he’d rise

from his recliner, brace against his walker to greet me—

when, in his day, he’d crave a ticket anyplace


adventure called—cathedrals, streets of cobblestone

in Florence, in Munich, whole itineraries

to trouble the ground his ancestors walked


imagine their ingress, egress,

until the diabetes and a beat-up body wore him down.

When my nieces ask about their late


grandfather, I say it’s a shame

they’ll never know him healthy, always with a plan,

how he would say, my name is John, what's yours,


to any handyman, extend his hand.

How when he taught, you’d never see him

in a shirt without a pen clipped to his pocket,


or outside without a proper hat, being fair

and mostly bald. He only wanted Florida again,

just one last time, before he died.


I see him near the portico, his overflowing

bookcase, coats racked trench to rain.

Hear background chimes mark time.


Hear Father translate nostalgia

from Greek roots: return home and pain.


 

Sarah Carey is a graduate of the Florida State University creative writing

program. Her poems have appeared recently in Gulf Coast, Five Points, Sugar

House Review, Florida Review, Redivider, River Heron Review, Split Rock

Review, Atlanta Review, and elsewhere. Her book reviews have appeared

recently in Salamander, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, and the Los Angeles Review.


Sarah's poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and the Orison

Anthology. She is the author of two poetry chapbooks, including

Accommodations (2019), winner of the Concrete Wolf Chapbook Award, and The

Heart Contracts (2016, Finishing Line Press.) Her debut full-length

collection, The Grief Committee Minutes, is forthcoming from Saint Julian

Press in September 2024. Visit her at SarahKCarey.com, on Instagram

@skcarey1, Bluesky @saycarey1.bsky.social, or Twitter/X @SayCarey1.


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