“Smoking Shelter” by Chad Frame

December 16, 2020Posted by

Chad Frame

SMOKING SHELTER

Outside the hospice ward of the VA Medical Center in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania

Easter, and the glass enclosure’s clouded 
like a rheumy eye. Old men are smoking,
wheezing in their service hats and wheelchairs.

We’ve brought my father’s dog. I know it’s not 
a man’s dog, he announces, chihuahua
resting on the blue quilt draped on his lap.

That’s a great dog anyway, says Cecil, 
his rumbling basso hoarse with settled phlegm. 
Looks about the right size for a football.

We lost our last one. What starts as laughter
in both throats turns to rasping, then wet coughs,
echoes from a deep well. My father says,

I hear come October we’re not allowed
to smoke here anymore. He looks at me. 
You’ll get me out of here before then, right?

But before I can answer, another 
chair-bound man slowly scoots over to us, 
tells my father, You look just like Jesus. 

I guess I can see it. The hair, the beard, 
the starvation, sallow skin, scroll parchment
stretched thinly over wooden finials.

You suffer like he did, he continues.
But I can’t heal you guys, my father says.
I wish I could. Another coughing fit.

You need something? my mother asks, reaching 
in her purse. Yeah, he says, wiping his mouth 
with a trembling hand. An Enditol pill.

I wonder, What will be your last pleasure?
A parking lot view, a few puffs, warm breeze, 
smelling secondhand gas station chicken? 

He is risen, and I realize each thing 
opens at its own pace—our hearts, the first 
spring blooms, church-bound women in yellow hats.

—from Rattle #69, Fall 2020

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Chad Frame: “I wanted to chronicle different aspects of the process of my father dying, from terminal diagnosis to paperwork to day-to-day feeding him in hospice. Writing about what was happening was honestly the only thing that got me through it, and I hope it can be helpful in some way to anyone going through something similar. It was an awkward time, yet beautiful in the way a relationship between an only child, introverted, gay poet son and a divorced, alcoholic, disabled Vietnam veteran father can be. When it was over, I was left with a pickup truck, two Purple Hearts, a box of ashes, a triangularly folded flag, and a stack of poems. I’m not sure which I treasure most.”

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