“And on the third day, Jesus said, ‘rise up and walk,’”
Said my father, dead now for more than three days.
He walked and walked and walked. Over to me,
On the side of my grandmother’s house, the grass green
As it has always been even in the shadows,
And the shadows playing with the conversation
Of the day, and the apple of knowledge
Had made its appearance but no longer on the tree,
Just in the conversation of art and who was
Alive in it, then he showed up, my father,
From behind me, as if I birthed him from the tree of my back,
The shadow it made within the shadow of the house,
And I fell and was suddenly in a lawn of yellow light.
Caught in a Black Doorway
Roger Reeves
Roger Reeves is the author of King Me (Copper Canyon 2013) and the forthcoming Best Barbarian (W. W. Norton 2022). He lives in Austin, Texas, where he is an associate professor in the English Department at the University of Texas at Austin.