Shane Allison

My Father Has a Stroke

Today is a week exactly when my father had a stroke

When my mother found him on the floor

In a pool of his own piss

He used his left hand to keep is from seeing his dick

Because the right arm was paralyzed, no longer good for use

I'll never forget him puking up my mother's beef stew

When the cute paramedics carried him away in the ambulance.

They've since moved him out of ICU

Needed the bed I guess

But what else is there when they've done all they can

Pumping him with prescriptions,

Pricking his arm with needles for viles of blood?

There's been so much blood

One nurse said she was giving him insulin

Because "he's a little too sweet," she said.

A pretty blond of a girl like someone out of a Disney movie

They moved him into the main part of the hospital,

Fourth floor neurology for people who have suffered strokes like my dad.

He's got a good view of a tree

I think of him staring out of it at night

Contemplating his 79 years around the sun

And all his fuck ups in the process.

I think of him praying to God behind parshed lips,

Under bad morning breath

I look up at him from word search pages

And think, "Are you in there somewhere?"

Caged in a body that has betrayed him

Starved of insulin and VA blood pressure pills

"Fight, My mother says, as she looks down at him. "You just have to fight."

I don't know if he can make out her words,

Or even if he knows he's had a stroke

I want to be anywhere but in this room

Staring at a man everyone says I look like

I want to slash a hole in time,

Go back to the day before my father's stroke

And say, "I love you, Daddy.”