POETRY

The Archivist

By Patrick Holian     VOLUME 54.1

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when his father died the son took the wasp’s nest
from beneath the eaves of their summer home’s
roof. his father, the archivist, a kind
man, a sleepy drunk, a man unable

to part with the deserted home of these
miscreants that sent him to Mt. Sinai
three times in the summer of ’96,
died peacefully as he slept next to his

wife. it wasn’t the wasp’s fault, his father
had said, both eyes swollen shut. the son climbed
a ladder, early July, with gloves and
pliers, took masticated wood in hand,

it resembled an eyeless, noseless face,
nest’s entrance as agonized mouth, and brought
it inside, let wife, daughters examine
it in the study, amongst his father’s

books, miniature windmills, photographs
of shipping lanes. wife and daughters asleep,
he crept out to the pond. he heard crickets,
cicadas, the sound of the nest giving
beneath the weight of his fingertips. once
the second mosquito landed on his
arm he reared back, closed grey eyes, sent the nest
to the moon printed on the water’s skin.

 


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PATRICK HOLIAN is a Mexican-American writer from San Francisco, California. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from St. Mary’s College of California and a PhD in English from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. His fiction and poetry have appeared or is forthcoming in Suburban Diaspora, Arkansas Review, Black Warrior Review, Gigantic Sequins, Oculus Vox, Yalobusha Review, Moon City Review, Apricity Magazine, and Whiskey Island Review. Patrick was a finalist in the 2019 Ploughshares Emerging Writer’s contest and was a runner-up in the Black Warrior Review’s 2019 flash fiction contest.


VOLUME 54.1