Parents and Children

Hudgins's elegy for his still-living father is certainly not the only poem that blends his preoccupation with his parents' death and dying. "My Father's Corpse" humorously reconstructs a memory from early childhood:

[my father] lay stone still, pretended to be dead.
My brothers and I, tiny, swarmed over him
like puppies. He wouldn't move. We tickled him
. . .
. . . . We pushed small fingers up
inside his nostrils, wiggled them, and giggled.
He wouldn't move.

It wasn't until the little boys became alarmed that young Andrew himself aggressively tested the limits of his father's pretense:

[and] slammed my forehead on his face. He rose,
he rose up roaring, scattered us from his body
and, as he raged, we sprawled at his feet—thrilled
to have the resurrected bastard back.