}} I Imagine My Father Asking Me What Being ______ Is Like, While I Swipe My American Express to Pay for His Lungs’ Virus I Do Not Know How to Pronounce |

Poetry at Sangam

SangamHouse

 










I Imagine My Father Asking Me What Being ______ Is Like, While I Swipe My American Express to Pay for His Lungs’ Virus I Do Not Know How to Pronounce

As if the itch of my _____-ness was about
to burst. We have become penguins,
entrepreneurs of standing, waiting to hide
and fix something in my hiding.
Being _____ is like jammed with creases.
I cannot straighten myself like the artificial
fabric of Uniqlo jeans. My head is spinning
like an agitator. I guess my point being,
in comparison, you’re an ironing board.
Because my _____-ness cannot be spoken
of like my salary, we should talk
about something else, though I wish
to tell you that some nights,
in retrospect, were too limbic, yet sublime.
I think _____ thoughts, play
_____ chess, walk _____ dogs.
Do not expect answers straight
like your Saturday plans. Let’s not talk
about convalescence, either.
“What’re anagrams?” you ask.
Up bored means be proud, I say.
“I’m both.” You are not – I am a removed
tooth that lacks tradition. Your pride
folded, rusted like the mouth
of a needy tap when you saw me veer
the claw crane of a UFO catcher
towards not the lightsaber from Star Wars,
but an Eeyore. Back then, I knew
you knew it, as you do now when you load
your stippled lungs with still-bare breaths.
I imagine you asking me why I read
Sartre. Because Sartre cannot reset
us, and between us, there’s no thrill
but a tradition that tells me to truckle
in wretchedness, remain beside you
like a receipt, because recovery is ultimately
a swabbing of capitalism’s rear end.
“You aren’t like me,” you say.
True: my shadow ruffles
on your burdock-reeking torso,
and my lungs are not the ones shadowed,
computed, invoiced, item
by item, then saved and paid
for, then turned into redeemable
mileage, mane, and deer fences
that I would pretend feel exotic
in numerous selfies to rid the thin
rind of filial debts in my skin,
though I wish I could stop wishing
someone, years later, saying True,
when I say what you said, so I will not be left
to feel the being and nothingness
of being ______.
 
 
The poem first appeared in Copper Nickel.