After James by Michael Helm

Author:Michael Helm
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
Published: 2016-09-13T04:00:00+00:00

And there it ended, like an imprint of my confusion, or a spirit waving at me from the edge of a dream. If I stared long enough at the spirit—I cannot explain this—it had my father’s face.

Though “Reunion” had been posted recently, after I moved back to Montreal, I hadn’t remembered it well. It was the kind of poem that didn’t linger past the experience of reading it. Yet now I felt called back to it, so the lines must have made a claim on me without my conscious knowledge. The scene presented a dinner party at a family reunion. The speaker thinks of absent family, some dead, some he knows distantly, and siblings he feels connected to mostly through the internet. The reunion includes Christians and Muslims and the conversation gets heated just as a storm kicks up and people rush around saving things from the table. Or something. If I believed my theory, there were details from my life here, but also a new false detail that could direct me away from an important truth. I read and reread it. A heat formed around “the minutes/Of the accident.”

On my laptop I had screenshots of the accident report in Turkish and a text of the translation. The document was titled “Kaza Tespit Tutanağı,” which translated as “Minutes of the Accident Report.” Was this a chance echo? On my first and only reading, I’d allowed myself to wonder why my parents hadn’t been wearing seat belts. Now I gave the record the full attention I hadn’t the heart for when it was sent to me. The telling line was stark in light of the poem: “Araba park halinde, motoru çalışır vaziyette bulundu.” “The car was found parked with the engine running.” If they’d died in a crash, why was the car in park?

Apocalypse. From apokalyptein (Greek), meaning apo—“from” + kalyptein “to cover, conceal.” The world had ended for me almost two years ago when I got the call from my parents’ colleague in Turkey. With the Londoner it was brought back to life. Now in Rome in my little room I felt death-haunted and electric. Things had about them a nimbus of fatal promise, possibility. I wanted to sleep with Amanda again, more than sleep. I called her and she reminded me she was at work. I told her to phone me after her shift. Almost in the same motion I tapped end call and pressed redial.

“Can’t talk I said.” There was music in the background.

“I’m taking the night off. Where should I go?”

“Your voice sounds strange,” she said.

“How did you first hear of Three Sheets?”

“Same as August. In a pop-up on my computer. How did you?”

The Londoner had shown it to me, sent it to me, kept drawing my attention to it.

“I want to be alone with you.” I needed to stop thinking. “What’s the Palatine?”

“It’s a hill with a lot of old rocks that used to be buildings.”

“What should I do?”

“Detta and Cinzia will have fun plans. I’ll have them call you.

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