Shane Holohan Father’s Day The pig’s bladder you blagged from Keefe’s Knackers’ yard to kick down old laneways is there (under ‘K’) with your stories of Bang-Bang, pitch ’n’ toss, early morning silences shared with your own dad. There’s the drift-wind blowing oceans of grass, sun setting, road cooling, you tanned, dusty, weary. There’s lightning whip-lashing Centre Point Tower And your pay-day sprint with the week’s wages to get to your ma. Each is indexed and placed on a shelf, cross-referenced with your name and your name and your name, for their careful return when you’re done here. Stacked also are frames for moments to come: grandmothers’ shawl christenings, birthday-cake blowings, present-openings, mud-kneed pigeon-chested medal-wieldings: They won’t be needed for the tomorrows that begin with today. There’s a locked room with locked boxes, for your locked boxes and your tied sacks It doesn’t matter what’s in them You, you and you, you will be taking them back. Empty you out, then step through the door Bring only the you from the day you were born. We’ll have your blue- brown- green-eyedyour six-foot- five-foot-ten- six-foot-twoblonde- brown- and red-hairedscholastic- athletic- icelandic- germanic- charismaticdouble helix of cytosine, guanine, adenine, thymine: We’ll have your nature, not your nurture, because here at the clinic, it’s always father’s day. the pickled body
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