My Father’s Voice
A poem by Johnny Kovatch

My Father’s Voice

I forget how our conversation starts,
but when he ends a thought with
When I cross over the river,
I know my father is referencing
when he’s no longer here.
This is the moment I mute the call,

find myself shaken because I’m really listening
this time, & damn him & bless him
for triggering me because I hadn’t been
paying attention up to this point.
This is when I imagine
our conversation is from the other side,

his voice splitting the ether to comfort
me on the other end. I unmute after he senses
the silence, after he might wonder
if I’ve lost him through the hills,
right after I’ve blown my nose into a napkin.
Are you there? he says, as I soften to tell him,

Yes, a bad connect on my end, &, like that,
he dives into the rest of his morning,
how he cleared a corner of the garage,
filled old paint cans with kitty litter
until they hardened & could be hauled away.
I listen to him break down the cost

of new shingles after a hailstorm,
how he summoned his own inspector
to compare the line item with the roofer’s estimate.
I’m not sure if I even hear it all correctly,
but the point—I wasn’t going to stop him.
Talk as long as you want, I think.

About the Author:

Johnny Kovatch’s commissioned work appears in PEN America’s anthology: The Sentences That Create Us. His novel, 59 Hours, was published by Simon & Schuster. His work has appeared in The Los Angeles Review, Barrow Street, Sou’wester, Cholla Needles, The Atticus Review, The Headlight Review and Why to These Rocks, an anthology celebrating fifty years of the Community of Writers. He is the founder of Unlock the Arts, a nonprofit based in Portland, Oregon, that specializes in expressive writing for system-impacted teens and adults. He splits his time between the MacLaren Youth Correctional Facility in Woodburn, Oregon and Pelican Bay State Prison in Crescent City, California. 

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