\n<\/p>\n
My father does not believe in God or therapists\u2014<\/p>\n
instead, he pedals his bike past Brighton Beach
\nto the Coney Island Y to swim his fifty laps.<\/p>\n
Once, I went with him and watched as he emerged
\nfrom the locker room in faded swim trunks<\/p>\n
moving slowly to the edge of the pool. He paused,
\nlifting his hands over the gray halo on his chest,<\/p>\n
pressing his palms together in a gesture
\nI know he learned as a boy.<\/p>\n
My father\u2019s eyes: devout with a darkness
\nhe keeps buried deep inside<\/p>\n
where it glows hell-hot as the ember
\nfrom the cigarillo his father\u2014a womanizer,<\/p>\n
drunk, half-asleep\u2014dropped on the sheets
\nsetting the bed ablaze, and even though extinguished<\/p>\n
kept smoldering invisibly inside the mattress springs,
\nreigniting, sending the house up in smoke a second time.<\/p>\n
So my father\u2019s anger burns, a blood-wicked flame
\nscorching through the softest parts of his interior<\/p>\n
until it rages through the house,
\nblackening the rooms again.<\/p>\n
Even in the absence of ideology
\nI am trying to learn forgiveness\u2014<\/p>\n
I watched my father\u2019s body breach the air for just a moment
\nbefore he dove, disappearing beneath the surface.<\/p>\n
Steam coiling through the chlorinated room,
\nthe ripples his body made still reached me on the other side.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My father does not believe in God or therapists\u2014 instead, he pedals his bike past Brighton Beach to the Coney Island Y to swim his fifty laps. Once, I went with him and watched as he emerged from the locker room in faded swim trunks moving slowly to the edge of the pool. He paused,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24499,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[14867],"class_list":{"0":"post-24498","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-social-issues","8":"tag-syncretism"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24498","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24498"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24498\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/24499"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}