is what my father says when I ask him 

why he and Mother don’t come with me

to church, he’s reading the newspaper and

looking down like God through bifocals, his

and not God’s that is, and spreading the sheets

wide across to scan both hemispheres you

might say though the world is round and not flat

so I tell him Yes sir, I do, too, I

get you, then he says Your mother and I

begat you, his eyes dead on an item

about the new 1965 Fords

but he’s a Mopar man. Then I giggle

because he’s afraid of something so I

change the subject. When are you going to die?