I get his face

Autumn Schraufnagel

We spoon hummus onto warm pita 
at a Mediterranean restaurant 
in the middle of Ohio—consider 
how many generations it took to afford 
these kinds of creature comforts: 
me, popping olive after olive into my mouth, 
my mom, contemplating the purchase of a new 
showerhead—one that imitates rainfall and 
her dad, on a dairy farm in Northern Wisconsin
speaking perfect Slovak to the wind of his own
passed parents—and we could go on, the three of us, 
at the table, though the conversation tends to linger there: 
on Joseph, on Józef, on Joe, who never drank—
though my mother and I are two glasses deep—
who never traveled—though we’ve seen plenty—
who never spoke, except to animals. 
My dad tells the patchwork of his story:  
how he killed a deer with his hands, 
one that was caught, half dead, in his barbed fence—
how he twisted its neck, mercifully, gently. 
How my dad was never invited to feed the cows
because he was too enthusiastic. His center, 
not quiet enough. Not calm enough. I’m told 
Joe pulled me on sled through the snow woods 
before memory—and though I never knew him:
I get his face. My mom: his hands. His wife: 
a deep freeze in the basement still equipped 
to feed nine children. Recipes of sour and cabbage 
at Christmas. My dad tells the final story 
as the restaurant dims the lights,
as the waitress clears our laughably, remarkably 
scraped clean plates—he tells how Joe traveled once, 
to Florida, to visit sometime after I was born. 
He wanted to see the ocean before he left  
and when they went, he wouldn’t swim, 
wouldn’t even wade out to his ankles. 
The most he did was splash his hand 
at the water’s edge, lick his ocean-wet fingers. 
He had heard somewhere it was salty—
and he laughed, then, a lot, because it was.

Autumn Schraufnagel is writer, graduate teacher, and Creative Writing PhD student at Ohio University. She has previously earned her MFA from Oklahoma State University. Her poems have appeared in Poetry South, Moon City Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Saw Palm, West Trade Review, Academy of American Poets, and elsewhere.