The Truth by Geoff Rips
Chapter One, I Explain Myself
____________________________________

Call me Chuy. Chuy Testimonio de Felíz Pingarrón. I am the only known son of my mother, who did not refuse to claim me in the last minutes of her deathbed. And I’m not the only son, I’ll wager on my soul, of my father who will wander faceless through the dark rooms of eternity. They also call me son of old Ofelia. They also call me worse than a cockroach. They also call me third post from the right. They call me anything they want. I don’t hear them. They don’t know me. They don’t even know themselves, the way they come here willing to pay a woman to tell them they are who they want to be. I can see it as I sit here on the front porch as they walk by me going into the house, refusing to see me, as if I were the last doubt they may have about themselves. As if we might have something in common. I see all those shoes and all those pairs of khaki pants with bulging flies that can barely contain their cargo. I see the way they walk up on the front porch already inclined in the angle used for falling into bed. And when they walk out the front door, I see the light breezes blowing through the new looseness of their pants. Some will stop here beside me on the way out to ask if my back is feeling better, just like that was the reason they came here in the first place—just to inquire about my health. And I will tell them, talking to their belts, No, the diseases of my back will never be improved. And to do this I have to point my knees toward the mimosa tree growing on the west side of the house. Then it will follow, through the painful course of the wandering pilgrimage of my spine, that my shoulders will be turned as if to face the approach of someone walking up the front porch from the street and my head will then be turned to confront the belt buckle that has just walked out the front door holding its precious vacuum. It’s been like this for more than fifty years, the eternal wandering of my spine.

From the first chapter of The Truth by Geoff Rips

New Issues Poetry & Prose, Western Michigan University, Dept. of English,
1903 W. Michigan Ave., Kalamazoo, MI 49008-5331
| Home | Book Index |