Coffee
  By Cappy Love Hanson

My dead father ghosts into one of my chronic
dreams: a cocktail party, strangers; anybody’s
silly claim to their own three cubic feet of air,
corseted between unfamiliar, hallway-narrow
walls. He’s the age he was when I was maybe
four, slim and sapling-straight; his latticed
bones yet to hook him like a shepherd’s crook.

Shouldering through the mass of guests
I ought to know and cannot properly introduce--
my dead mother would be appalled, if Dad
had thought to bring her--he pardon-me’s his way
into the kitchen, pulls a coffee can from the correct
cabinet, first try. Pries the key from the lid, latches
the metal strip in the slot, and takes the first turn.
Hsss, the pressure whispers, canned at the lower
elevation of the waking world, its sibilant
voice imprisoned there for decades.

The scent snakes out, expands to fill
the rooms. Conversation contracts, and every
head swivels toward him, helpless to resist, as if
he’s decanted the chromosomal syllable
of memory’s very making.