Portrait of My Father Drowning

in the type of love he deserves; nestled
in his lap, a young me is learning
how to swim. I flounder in
water that is only knee-deep,

while, fully-dressed on the pool’s
edge, my mother records
the lesson. Blood will always
be outweighed by the body

of water it wades into. Earth,
itself, I realize, is just a body
of waters. Years later, I spend a summer
patrolling a different pool’s edge. I lose

count of how many sons are held
by their fathers; large &
calloused hands buoying
their lineages, these islands

and their fluttering limbs.

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This poem first appeared in Crab Orchard Review in June 2019. To view the poem as it originally appeared, visit the publication here.

Rest in peace to Jon Tribble, a tremendous force in the community who is survived by his wife and co-editor, poet Allison Joseph.

MUSEUMS

Time is the greatest gift
one can ever offer, because it is
the only thing we cannot

take back. It is the same
reason I will not go
to war for a country

I cannot belong to.
I cannot be well-
versed in fast enough to

beckon the tongue to give.
& give lip— all split
and dry with new

breath in the morning. 
All I can offer
the land of my parents

is the promise

that its proper name will not be lost
on me. The curse of the diaspora is to
become a scholar: 
                    an urn for all
the instances their hands
were too small
for anything less
                    than ash.

Is there a word for it? That
sensation of inner lung
being coated by the dust

of another man’s wake. 
I might as well read:
palestine, phulisteen,
a severed realm

of artifacts, a museum
filled with too much
                         echo.

This poem first appeared in Voicemail Poems on April 8th, 2016. To view the poem as it originally appeared, visit the publication here.

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