Man dancing with a paper cup
By Nick Flynn
You still send letters but I know
You are dead, I see you
Wandering the streets when I go back home,
& I swear I am never going back. A glance
In the trash, a barrel on fire, my hands
Pass right through you. You wrote
From prison but I couldn’t remember
How you looked
So the bars became cheekbone, shadow
Lash, pressed
Tightly to your face. Maybe
The silence you move through
Shaped me, the way
A church bell ringing resonates
Long after the ear ceases to perceive it,
The way waves space themselves
Until they stop.
•Man dancing with a paper cup, a poem by Nick Flynn, involves a father-son relationship that has deteriorated. Flynn’s father was in fact homeless.
•The poem describes a broken family relationship due to a series of unfortunate events.
•The speaker mentions that the man in the poem has gone to jail, which is a direct parallel to the women at CFL. Prison time is an obvious cause of parents becoming detached from their children.
