the dipsomaniac's self-portrait, dragged home
It’s my fault, Jim, home so much, limping around, ruined knees, overweight, under the Influence, burping, nonslim, sweat-soaked in that broiler of a trailer, burping, farting, frustrated, miserable, knocking lamps over, overshooting my reach.
Context
The man sees himself clearly — home, under the Influence, knocking lamps over — and closes on the image his son has already watched enacted: the drunk hauled in at night by cabbies, indistinguishable in that posture from the maimed, both carried out feet-dragging like a boneless Christ. The scene's private grief and its geometry of the failed body are fathers-sons'; the steady drinking that ruins the man is the strand landed here.