Prose Poem Published in Poet Lore

Midnight Shift

I knew what the power plant kept from the house. Two in the morning, my mother would nudge me awake and carry me on her hip into the master bedroom. My father's side of the mattress looked bare. The alarm's red numbers scarred the opposite wall from the mirror hung above the headboard and the turn-dial television blinked in the corner. A preacher was on channel five, waving a green handkerchief with gold trim. He promised the swatches of material cured arthritis and sickness, healed wounds and brought money to a broken home. His faint whooping and laughing kept me stirring though my mother curled over on her side and fell asleep, a man's voice humming through the house. I got up to switch on the ceiling fan, crawled to the knob, searched the stations but settled back on the preacher's infomercial. It looked like a flood had slicked and pinned back his hair. If I had enough cord to walk the telephone receiver next to the screen, I would have called my father to ask him if he lit the lamps in that church. If I had enough cord, I would have dialed the number to have the holy man pray for my father's machine-crushed hands, his missing fingers.