In the Hills of Yugoslavia

I met my father for the first time in 1998, after having imagined him my entire life. I was 36 years old. My body knew him immediately. His laughter, vanity, and gait was eerily familiar to me. I have not seen him since.


His strong, vital belly
welcomes me into his world,
checkered shirt flapping.
He laughs with his goats,
and mocks old grandmother in black,
tiny as a shrunken bird.

She chills the milk
in the light of dusk,
swooping the ladle up and down.
Chin resting in her palm,
she witnesses the white liquid
that has been with her all her life.

On the second day
he slaughters Milosevic.
Her guts are spilling out of the branches
she hangs from.

In the evening I eat her flesh
with cheese, homemade and
white as a virgin,
tomatoes,
red as first blood,
and cucumbers,
green as Eden.

My father and I
have known one another
four days.