Remembering My Father Poem by Alexandre Nodopaka

It's not that I cannot write in that language
it's that I don't have a Cyrillic keyboard.
That won't stop me from sharing and singing it
accompanied by Louis Armstrong's trumpet.

The poem will rhyme with Otchi Tchernye,
a song I learned by rote listening to my father
bellow it ten thousand times with the melody
echoing off the tile in the shower stall.

I became sick of Black Eyes. My girlfriends were
blue green eyed built like brick houses.
And then I failed to stick to my fixations
and fell for the brunettes and fiery red heads.

I listened to my father.