[I cleaned out my father’s house after he died…]
I cleaned out my father’s house after he died, threw away his uniforms from the war, his letterman jacket, family photos, and correspondence. I tossed his old stationary and cancelled checks, and I found slips of paper on which he’d written, congestive heart failure. In his work pants mended with duct tape there was the flap from an envelope, and on the back, he’d printed, congestive heart failure. On the inside of a matchbook in the front seat of his car: congestive heart failure. These notes were everywhere, on his desk, in his toolbox, in a kitchen drawer. I can’t know if he was trying to remember exactly what would kill him, or if by writing it over and over he thought he might tame it and keep it at bay.
Gary Young’s most recent books are That’s What I Thought and American Analects, both from Persea Books, as well as Taken to Heart: 70 Poems from the Chinese. Other books include Even So: New and Selected Poems; Pleasure; No Other Life, winner of the William Carlos Williams Award; Braver Deeds, winner of the Peregrine Smith Poetry Prize; The Dream of a Moral Life which won the James D. Phelan Award; and Hands. He has received the Shelley Memorial Award and grants from the NEH, NEA. He teaches creative writing and directs the Cowell Press at UC Santa Cruz.
