John Elizabeth Stintzi,
"Cold Dying Black Wet Cold Early Thing"

—————— One ——————
My dad makes jokes about the calf
dying in his sauna.
Premature, storm son,
mid-May freezing.
My dad left him in the field first, birthed
on a stone early from the stress of a storm.
Dad left it—comatose—came home,
then turned back for it.
My dad makes jokes about the calf
dying in his sauna.
He goes in the bedroom and he jokes.
He opens the wood sauna door
and he coos: “Poor critter.”
Breath: occasional. Blinkless.

 

—————— Two ——————
My dad makes jokes about the calf
dying in his sauna.
The dry red heat lamp my dad sits in to boil
the toxicity of the world out through his skin.
The dry red heat lamp my dad sits in to boil
the grave away. The tiny premature calf
in the dry red heat instead of the cold
wet grey. The hot red heat lamps in the huge
plywood sauna in the bedroom Dad made
where he sits shirtless and sweats the fear
out, the fear of the poison, the Mercury,
the Arsenic out.
My dad makes jokes about the calf
dying in his sauna. Bleating. Dry red heat.
Mother and I aren't laughing.
We’ve heard all these jokes before.

 

—————— Three ——————
My dad made jokes about the calf
dying in his sauna.
The calf dying in his sauna woke me
up this morning. Ploughed me up
from sleep. I first thought the sound
was my dad practicing his bleat, perhaps
to bait the pillaging wolves to gunpoint,
or else I thought perhaps it was Dad dying,
bleating like a calf, a dying, begging
sound he's known for half his life.
The sound I'm sure I'll make.
After the calf began to bleat again,
reason overtook me. Then wonder
pulled me up from the bed.
The bleat, the sound, the beat.
Like a joke, about a dying calf
in a sauna—
To approach it is just another way
of saying sorry.