Elegy for My Father

Sometimes, I kill my father.
Heart attack.
But that’s too easy. So I feed him
an overdose of medication
or into spinning belts at work.
He’s an awful mess, his organs
strewn across the tile.
Other days, I drown him
in the Columbia, friends reeling
out his body with a net,
as if he were a salmon.
I kill, a thousand different ways,
feeling tiny stabs of regret
that I hadn’t done it sooner.
Really, he is alive, home from work,
watching the Weather Channel.
He notes the temperature
where his friends and relatives live,
and I imagine he may wonder
where I am, if I’m expecting clouds
or children. One day, our silence
will be permanent.
There are so many ways to die,
but I’m tired of killing
a man who is already dead.