Trash Cans:
An Excavation of Family as Midden Heap
(Part 1 - Father)

Father's galvanized steel trash can presides over the dining table in his gray pin-striped suit, monogrammed white shirt with opal cufflinks, and Art Deco tie. I open his heavy lid and recoil from the aroma of half-chewed Coronas, lunchtime martinis, and secret shots of Old Crow. Inside are his black patent leather dress shoes, Hawaiian shirts, Mittenwald viola, red trap-door underwear, Martin ukulele, applause and laughter, slices of rare roast beef, reels and reels of Celluloid, curly sharp copper shavings from his metal lathe in the basement, sketches of Vargas girls, long-buried dreams of Hollywood, and architectural drawings. I hear the whistle of commuter trains as he hops aboard, taste the sweaty brow of the city he inhabits by day, and smell the elm leaves blazing in our drainage ditch out by the road where he stands every October at dusk, cigar and leaf smoke curling up toward Orion.