
I see him tracing the letters in the air,
His hands rotating his brush
As he paints this last virtual sign.
I have never seen his expertise so close up before.
I always focused on the letters he produced when I watched him paint—
Never on his hands and the brush itself.
I never noticed how all the skill
Is in the twirling and manipulation of the brush by the fingers—
His micro-maneuvering,
A crisp choreography.
I sit near his bed—
What is it he is writing?
An announcement?
Or a proclamation?
A signal?
Only muscle memory?
A moment later he stops breathing.
The forbidden trunk, green and black, metallic.
In the basement, in a corner, near where he painted.
I had touched it many times before, felt its coolness, its mystery.
I had run my hands over its sharp corners, fingered its latch.
Why had we been ordered,
By a man who never ordered anyone to do anything
To never open it?
Once I had lifted its lid, just a bit, just enough to see darkness inside.
Then quickly, guiltily,
Released my anxious curiosity, surprised by the weight of the lid
And the thump of its closing.
Forty years later I share with my own son the drawings done by a young man—
A boxing match with the audience silhouetted,
A Watusi warrior in headdress and mid-dance,
His house on Noble Street,
A Camel cigarette ad,
A bruised face peering out from between drawn curtains,
An hysterical man crouched in an abstract corner:
“Already the nuclear energy was out of control,”
Portraits of Asians,
Inks of water buffalo, shelters on stilts, Guady cemetery,
Colored drawing of the map of Green Island: “Or will rotation never come,”
A watercolor of an MP’s accoutrements: flashlight, baton, lit cigarette.
And his photos
Of a half-grinning man holding a decapitated head,
Indigenous women with bare breasts,
Burnt bodies in frozen poses emerging out of holes in the earth
Or washed ashore
Or in piles,
His brother in Germany with a cartoon bomb drawn at the top,
A sign asserting, “Kill the yellow-bellied bastards,”
Himself behind an anti-aircraft cannon,
Guarding prisoners of war,
His mother formally posed,
And Japanese money,
A document declaring he had crossed the equator,
A telegram from an art teacher in Ohio,
Sketches of my mother in labor with me.
–Jan Yourist (2010)
Such powerful memories … and love. Happy Father’s Day!
Tears of Sadness happy tears of your memories of the man I never met :but through daily living with you have come to know him ,your Father ,Isaacs Grandpa my Father in law
You carry his Love with you
Lovely
so lyrical, almost musical. How lucky you are to have his art.
Yes, so lucky. And especially lucky to have had him as a father!