Elegy for a Broken Machine

THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

Copyright © 2015 by Patrick Phillips

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House LLC, New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto, Penguin Random House companies.

www.aaknopf.com/poetry

Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House LLC.

Due to limitations of space, acknowledgments can be found at the end of the volume.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Phillips, Patrick, [date]
[Poems. Selections]
Elegy for a broken machine : poems / Patrick Phillips.—First edition.
pages      cm
“This is a Borzoi Book”—Title page verso.
ISBN
978-0-385-35375-5 (hardcover)—
ISBN
978-0-385-35376-2 (eBook)
I. Title.
PS
3616.
H
465
A
6 2015    811’.6—dc23    2014026436

Jacket image: E+/Getty Images
Jacket design by Oliver Munday

v3.1

For Ellen

My father was trying

to fix something

and I sat there just watching,

like I used to,

whenever something

went wrong.

I kept asking where he’d been,

until he put down a wrench

and said
Listen:

dying’s just something

that happens sometimes.

Who knows

where that kind of dream comes from?

Why some things

vanish, and some

just keep going forever?

Like that look on his face

when he’d stare off at something

I could never make out

in the murky garage,

his ear pressed

to whatever it was

that had died—

his eyes listening for something

so deep inside it, I thought

even the silence,

if you listened,

meant something.

In the dark he grunts

The fuck you want?
fists ripping

tubes out in his sleep.

I dream in my chair

he’s young: walking towards me,

squinting at the sun.

A P.A. hunches

in the half-light. I wake and

hear the Foley drain.

Out the window, rain.

Behind a paper curtain

someone worse off moans.

They came into

this cold white room

and shaved his chest

then made a little

purple line of dashes

down his sternum,

which the surgeon,

when she came in,

cut along, as students

took turns cranking

a shiny metal jig

that split his ribs

just enough for them

to fish the heart out—

lungs inflating

and the dark blood

circulating through

these hulking beige machines

as for the second time

since dawn they skirted

the ruined arteries

with a long blue length

of vein that someone

had unlaced from his leg,

so that by almost every definition,

my father died

there on the table

and came back in the body

of his own father,

or his mother at the end,

or whoever it was

the morphine summoned

up out of the grave, into his dreams—

like that figure

in the floor-length mirror

he kept talking to

as we inched a fluid-hung

telemetry pole

past the endless open doors,

until he was finally close enough

to recognize a flicker

in those bloodshot eyes

and a quiver in the mumbling lips—

so slack and thin

he leaned a little closer

to catch their ghostly whisper

before he even

realized it was him.

the father

of my son’s friend

watched his father die.

Then for some reason

came, still grieving,

to a soccer field where I,

a guy he knew,

or kind of knew,

stood with the others

trying not to stare

at the
there-

but-for-the-grace-of-God-

go-I
of him:

his eyes raw-rimmed

behind dark glasses

as herds of little bodies

shrieked and galloped

all around us—

whoever he was before

a trace, a remnant now,

shaking in the gray October wind:

the truth about love, about all of us,

so plain in him

there was nothing left

but to pretend

I was not watching

out the corner of my eye

when the muddy dog,

and the bouncing ball,

and the children

chasing after it

all seemed to veer

and disappear inside him.

to take his pulse and shut off the alarm,

her pink nails leaving little jaundiced dents in his forearm.

Today he cannot eat or walk or read or speak.

His glazed eyes follow me around the room, and blink.

When I shake the cup of ice, he flicks his gray bird-tongue—

as she commands, under her breath,
You must be the son.

By the time we got out on the water

the sun was so low, it wasn’t like water

but a field of gray snow that we plowed

in one endless white furrow of water,

skirting the rocks and wrecked trawlers

and abandoned old jetties just under the water—

my father in the bow, slick with fever,

whispering back to whatever the water

chattered and hissed through the hull—

until at last I saw lights on the water

and let the old Mercury rattle and sputter

its steaming gray rainbows out onto the water

as we drifted, at idle, the last time in his life,

through that beloved, indifferent harbor.

After his friends

rigged a pulley

and lowered the pack

of Kool menthols;

after he’d laughed

and then winced

and squinted up

at the trickle of dirt

dusting his lashes;

after his wife

had come sobbing

through the glare of the kliegs

and called down

to where the men pointed

how much she loved him;

after their son

sat cross-legged

at the edge of the hole

saying
yessir,

yessir
to whatever

came through the receiver;