EXCAVATION

Most things about my father I learned 
from a shoe box. In the basement I would examine 

his scratched leather, Swiss army knives and sunglasses,
holding each artifact up to the light that always sank 

onto the cold unfinished floor as if it was a stage,
as if someone I couldn’t see were watching—

an unspoken risk, a secret I was pulling out of a velvet bag
or magic hat to show the audience—I had to be careful. 

The last time my mother caught me 
looking for proof of my father, she could not leave 

the bed for a week; she said you’re willing to kill
your mother? For some questions you know I cannot 

answer? It was always summer when I pulled the stunt.
Every year near my birthday as I grew closer and closer 

to his death, I wanted to feel his touch—
I’d tip toe up and down the concrete stairs 

while she’d sit outside with a beer 
across the reclining Adirondack chair. We had to go on 

like this. When she’d catch me looking through
those boxes, I was like the men digging into Italian riverbeds 

for his marble lips, muscles, eyebrows left 
to crumble into sand—to touch what no longer belongs—

like this need to swim 
in old baths where great rulers would heal their bodies—just

to understand the history of dead touch—every summer
I’d touch what my father once touched, and so, I did.

Jenna Murray is a writer from Upstate New York. Her work has been published by Four Way Review, Poets.org, and Gandy Dancer. She is currently pursuing her MFA in poetry at Hunter College, where she was honored with the Academy of American Poets Prize and the Collie Hoffman Prize. Jenna has also worked with The Sealey Challenge and BOA Editions and currently serves as an adjunct professor of creative writing.