Syncretism

My father does not believe in God or therapists—

instead, he pedals his bike past Brighton Beach to the Coney Island Y to swim his fifty laps.

Once, I went with him and watched as he emerged from the locker room in faded swim trunks

moving slowly to the edge of the pool. He paused, lifting his hands over the gray halo on his chest,

pressing his palms together in a gesture I know he learned as a boy.

My father’s eyes: devout with a darkness he keeps buried deep inside

where it glows hell-hot as the ember from the cigarillo his father—a womanizer,

drunk, half-asleep—dropped on the sheets setting the bed ablaze, and even though extinguished

kept smoldering invisibly inside the mattress springs, reigniting, sending the house up in smoke a second time.

So my father’s anger burns, a blo