My Father's RageI sit with my recollectionsand a bowl of soupat the bottom of which liesfeta cheese, half meltedand my father's rage.A rage which lacks a chasisand a stencil to guide the lead lines.

Both the feta and the rage meltthe feta for a moment:acrid and vaginal on the tonguethe rage much longer, maybe decadesIt is tart, over night coffee.

That rage of coffee tartnessis familiar for meit has been injected into my veinsit has been moulded to my D.N.A.it has a long shelf life.

I stretch back to thecomic severity of the Cold,yet scalding warI reach out and snatch that rageI clutch it to my breastbut it is not my childwe are the same age, it and I.

It was conceived withhawk cop cars and revolvers drawnit lingered in the womb for three monthswith little blue pills, electroshockwith one t.v. channel watching golf

and nurses who told you when to shit.

All through the eightiesthe poster of the Incredible Hulkand the Knight Riderall through the eightieswars in El Salvador and Nicaraugaand the Transformers and the Thundercatsto the Berlin Wall falling,we shared a childhood.

The worm, the shape shifter, the shadowlinger over us like a plaguethreatened-through suicidal tendenciesthreatened-through social rejectionthreatened-through my first kiss,love, travel and a formal educationthreatened to burst like a stormbreaking the uterine walls and dragging the placenta along with it.

It burst-the last year of schoolhe ran off for three daysand hitch-hiked to Hamilton.They gave him stronger medicationand we poured silence, like foam over it.

It burst- we both screaming atthe top of our lungs into the phoneand then the little blue pills,electroshock,one t.v. channel watching golfand nurses who told you when to shit.

"Do you think it's funny?"

"No, Dad, I sob."

Adam Tod Leverton (atleverton@yahoo.ca)