How to Love an Alcoholic in Two Parts, Ending with a Drunk Stumbling Down Maryland Avenue

               After Hanif Abdurraqib



by Taiwana Shambley





No one can tell the boy

after his father swigs

from a ruffled paper bag

he is still his father



and not a rogue spirit.

The hand friendly with his mother’s neck

belongs to a ghost. If it turns to you

and says, Son, this is how you choke a bitch



call it least favored

substitute teacher

and not the knife still wet

with a lover’s blood



or the decorated basketball star

dropping 40 in their home

court. Just play a 80’s beat

so celebrated all the kids his age are scared



to rap to it

and the boy’s father is a fan favorite

to everyone mama

except the boy’s.





*



When I say I wanted the man in the hospital to never leave I mean I wanted his head

piked clean on my mother’s nightstand. The bones of him scattered in the rooms of

the only house his other family could afford and this is not another language for love.

The family moves to the empty house down the block and now the man’s not the only

thing me and them share. He strolls up and down Maryland avenue, his chest puffed

like an entire country, probably on the way to watch the rec kids around the corner and

there’s only so many different ways you can spot a wolf. Before it sinks teeth into the

only place you can call home and you close your eyes and wish for a new thing to call

sleep, or, a new truth worth closing your eyes for. A long pull from the stink hanging on

your cousin’s lip, or a book that lies so well makes you forget the birthdays of all your

half-brothers. When I say I wanted the man in the hospital to never leave I mean I

wanted the shards of broken bottles to rattle up his throat while everyone we loved

watched with their hands pressed underneath their chairs. I think I’m better now. I sit

in my mother’s living room and pick through progressive theories, wondering which

one will teach me how to love. And when she says to me with a bucket at her feet and

Mary J. Blige singing through the walls



Son, do you think my breath smells like your father’s?



I don’t tell her I buried the bottle

of vodka she chilled on the porch

that winter morning I was too little

to hurl the thing.



I don’t tell her I heard a thump

the other night and clambered up the steps

to help her shadow off the kitchen floor.



I don’t ask if she remembers.



Just turn my neck towards the window

and mourn the man still stumbling down Maryland avenue.





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