My Father's Head

I keep my father’s head
in a bike-helmet box
on the top shelf
of my bedroom closet.

I found it blinking up
through bubbles in the sink
as I was doing the last
of the silverware one night.

It’s not severed, but ends
graciously at the neck
in a smooth, flat stump.
I lifted it out, rinsed it off

and wrapped it in a dishtowel.
I remember at his funeral,
how I rested my hand
on his bald scalp to say

goodbye. It felt cold, not warm
like this one which, I’ll admit,
is different. Small words tickle
him now. I wake angry

to his The the the the wants is
the the the the gets chant. Poetry
never pleased him like this,
though we did play trumpet

duets. Now, he can’t even whistle
“Begin the Beguine,” a favorite
piece together. Whenever he tries
to begin his beguine, regrettable

in that breathless whistle of his,
I reach up, feel my own head
loosen on its hinge, my own body
stretching fingers for the door.

Bobby Parrott's poems appear in Tilted House, RHINO, Rumble Fish Quarterly, Atticus Review, The Hopper, Rabid Oak, Exacting Clam, Neologism, and elsewhere. Wearing a forest-spun jacket of toy dirigibles, he dreams himself out of formlessness in the chartreuse meditation capsule known as Fort Collins, Colorado.