ode to pokemon trainer Red
Trace DePass
(B) has always taught me to run
whether it be from a pokemon battle or an
unexpected visit from an actual bee’s noise.
i (B) run up stairs
like i’m sure to see my father. & i am not his,
just mine, & my thick hair twists, once in, now,
just now, an unrivalled out. i barely
care about what he thinks about my hair,
the ones i love, the way i dress, the way i give love,
as i would barely,
remember my nintendo DS Lite. how it don’t
work no more ‘cause it had guillotined to
divorce right after the charger had broke.
i do remember
Ranger, & Platinum, & Diamond,
riddled quiet in dusted cases; each
pokemon game & cartridge i
had as all i had
when
my father wasn’t there. & when my son,
Mew, reached level 100, i had made the best of
the hand Oak dealt me. Red, Ash, &
Silver
all dreamt my dream for a father
& i remember how they all never spoke. & i
remember whichever name you gave him
becoming the boy’s name. Silver’s mom got
running shoes from Silver’s dad.
Silver once bumped into a cave atop a mountain
& then found him – Red,
at its precipice,
transforming into,
now, just now, a Mew
– with its hair returned untethered & to
its original form; & so mindful
a Mew, in fact, he did learn how to learn
any move so one
might be performed like a dance which
might serve, like a mating call, to summon
a father who too searches for father.
remember? that conflict with Mew. once led
ash’s heart to petrified stone in the stale air. &
how diamond should sublimate to stale air,
a Pikachu’s tear once hauled Ash from his
cryogenesis, in fact, so well – Ash hasn’t aged
since, which implies Ash could die & get born
again & still have no father. we all remember
waking up alone & to a new mother, saying
not a thing
has changed, not our father, not
our mountains, not Pokemon.”
as fathers go unmentioned in the games
until 2002, my dad & i still don’t talk.
i wonder about how much it has to do with
being a father. i go to capture
a moment’s truth & stick it in poems
as trainers (B) run to catch the Mewtwo
with just pokeballs.
i hope Red had taken time to write his
requiem for his lost dad, when trainer
Silver, had happened
to find him praying at the mountain froth.
perhaps Red caught a cold & this
father-poem needed to be about how cold &
alone Red felt. maybe his throat
hurt too much to talk so Red fled the fight
in hopes to get a healing with
his father. maybe it was less of a (B) run &
moreso (A) jump; that his father was just
a sky away. just now.
i (B) run up stairs like i will
see my own. in the sky. from the top step
of mountains until i’m downstairs
with my single mother again.