Kimberly Gibson-Tran
Permission
1.
He slakes the blade with the carotid.
The scream opens
and closes. A gap pulses
then doesn’t.
2.
We’re on a mission trip, bussed through
Eagle Pass to Mexico. The rows are filled
with first- and second-year med students.
They ask my dad, their teacher, questions
I’ve never heard him answer. About how
he met Mom, some college mixer.
3.
I tag along, take down blood pressures
at the church entrance, pump long tubes
of balloons that twist into animals
for kids in the waiting room. A song
I know croons on the radio:
Y se llamaba Rosario.
4.
Across the road, a fenced in herd of goats.
When I get close, their pupils flatscreen.
5.
Dad doesn’t speak Spanish, but he can talk
with his hands. He and the pastor trade
jokes, examine a wart on Pastor’s toe.
6.
I know what Dad is thinking when he looks
at the goats.
7.
Una buena idea, says the pastor. Dad pays,
and they lead one out of the cage. Dad calls
his students to the test, makes them find
the artery. We take turns feeling:
soft brown neck, snick of red in the light,
what Mom would call a bay. She raised horses
as a kid in Indiana.
8.
Mom and Old MacDonald taught me
the varied bleats, how to separate goats
from sheep. On the farm, Mom knew what to do.
She put herself through nursing school.
When you learn what stokes the heart
you learn what stops it too.
9.
Dad said I didn’t have to watch if I didn’t want to.
10.
It’s spring break, an early Easter. Tomorrow
we’ll dance in the service with the evangélicos.
The lesson works on several levels.
11.
Two students fainted, the rest wouldn’t eat
the cabrito. Dad and Pastor laughed,
carved the meat for the patients and church staff.
12.
A decade after this I meet my future
father-in-law. Dinner is a peppery goat stew.
A slew of words comes back to me in Spanish.
I tell my boyfriend and his dad the goat story.
His dad nods, says my dad did things properly.
The man I love gags on the food,
can’t stand its gaminess.
13.
I can. I can stand it.
Kimberly Gibson-Tran holds two degrees in linguistics. Their recent writings appear in MEMEZINE, t’ART, Hole in the Head Review, The Bombay Literary Magazine, Baltimore Review, Rust & Moth, Reed Magazine, and elsewhere. Raised by medical missionaries in Thailand, she now lives in Princeton, Texas with her husband and cats.