Literature III Poetry Assignment

Martin Espada -1957

My Father is a Guitar

The cardiologist prescribed

a new medication

and lectured my father

that he had to stop working.

And my father said: I can't.

The landlord won't let me.

The heart pills are dice

in my father's hand,

gambler who needs cash

by the first of the month.

On the night his mother died

in faraway Puerto Rico,

my father lurched upright in bed,

heart hammering

like the fist of a man at the door

with an eviction notice.

Minutes later,

the telephone sputtered

with news of the dead.

Sometimes I dream

my father is a guitar,

with a hole in his chest

where the music throbs

between my fingers.