'Oil & Steel'
Poet Henri Cole's latest collection is Blackbird and Wolf. Susan Unterberg hide caption
"Oil & Steel" appears in Henri Cole's latest collection of poems, Blackbird and Wolf. In this sixth collection of poetry, the Virginia-based poet deepens his excavations of autobiography and memory.
To mark National Poetry Month, NPR.org is featuring a series of newly published works selected by the Academy of American Poets. Learn more about this and other titles at the academy's New Spring Books list.
"Oil & Steel"
Henri Cole
My father lived in a dirty dish mausoleum,
watching a portable black-and-white television,
reading the Encyclopedia Britannica,
which he preferred to Modern Fiction.
One by one, his schnauzers died of liver disease,
except the one that guarded his corpse
holding a tumbler of Bushmills.
"Dead is dead," he would say, an anti-preacher.
I took a plaid shirt from the bedroom closet
and some motor oil — my inheritance.
Once, I saw him weep in a courtroom —
neglected, needing nursing — this man who never showed me much affection but gave me a knack
for solitude, which has been mostly useful.
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