My Father the Repo Man

The used car he’d sell
on lien, way past
the payback— late, long
after the day spent
its aggravated course.
He’d rise, sit on the edge
of the bed, head down,
stare at the floor, begin
to fit one sock at a time
over his size 13 feet,
phone Mike the bodyman
to meet him at such
and such an address
in the depths of Cleveland.
What my father was happy
to be rid of, another sale,
one more victory for food
on the table in the struggle
for survival, his heart sinking
into the next attack. Who knows
how the customer would react
to what was his was no longer his?
Down the hall I was awake
to his footsteps, first slow,
then more steady, pacing
through the living room
and out the front door.

*

Philip Terman’s books include The Whole Mishpocha (Ben Yehuda Press, 2024), My Blossoming Everything (Saddle Road Press, 2024)) and, as co-translator, Tango Beneath a Narrow Ceiling: The Selected poems of Riad Saleh Hussein (Bitter Oleander, 2021). A selection of his poems, My Dear Friend Kafka (Nimwa Press, Damascus) was translated into Arabic by Saleh Razzouk. His poems and essays appear in many journals and anthologies, such as Poetry Magazine, The Kenyon Review, Poetry International, The Sun, The Bloomsbury Anthology of Contemporary Jewish Poetry, and Extraordinary Rendition: American Writers on Palestine. He directs The Bridge Literary Arts Center, a regional writers’ organization in western, PA, and is co-curator of the Jewish Poetry Reading Series, sponsored by the Jewish Community Center of Buffalo. Terman conducts poetry workshops and coaches writing hither and yon. He’s collaborated with composers, visual artists, and performs his poetry with the jazz band Catro. philipterman.com