ALLISON ALBINO

Location History

I ask ChatGPT, Where do the dead go? And I see my grief
reduced to bullet points: heaven, hell, reincarnation,
nirvana, resurrection, it all ends with the brain.
Nah, this doesn’t sound like my father.
He would visit heaven, chitchat with family,
catch up on the chismis of torrid love affairs
and squandered fortunes,
drink a nice juice, have a look around
for Marilyn Monroe and come back to us.
He’d make a pitstop in purgatory,
give cups of ice chips to those feeling queasy,
steal a National Geographic from the side table.
He would take a stroll around hell too,
do a few laps before it got too hot, take a seat
with some popcorn and watch the party
as if he were binge watching Criminal Minds.
He’d maybe lecture a serial killer on the benefits
of quitting smoking,

then head back upstairs
and come back to us.

Maybe, he’s in the wind,
in the birds outside, in Saturn’s rings. Maybe,
snoozing in his old Laz-y boy chair, in the childhood
home I just sold to someone
who will rebuild over the remains of our family’s past:
a brown Baldwin piano with ivory keys,
albums filled with my mother’s photographs
of tulips. But he wouldn’t stay there
for long, I’m sure of it.
He’d pack up and walk to the train station,
take the NJ Transit to Penn Station, then 2/3
uptown to us, because I am waiting
in the apartment. He’d turn off the lights
I’d left on, close the loose caps, rub
my son’s back as he slept, start
the morning coffee before we got up,
leave an empty cookie wrapper
in the trash. Keeping
an eye on –

Everything.
Where he has been,
where he must go,
where I’m hoping
he’ll drop
a pin, share with me
that he has arrived.

Allison Albino is a Filipina-American poet and French teacher who lives and writes in Harlem. Her work has appeared in Narrative, The Indiana Review, Poetry Northwest, The Kenyon Review, Adroit, Poem-a-Day, and elsewhere. She has received fellowships from The Community of Writers, The Kenyon Review and Tin House. She studied creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College and has an M.A. in French literature from NYU. She teaches at The Dalton School in New York City.