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"I Picked a Flower for Myself" by Tricia Louvar

2 poems by Duncan Slagle

After, I Keep Everything that Reminds Me Of

​your father
                 & my father
sunk into the dirt
                 we recover
the heat in
                 our blood.
Faces red like
                 split pomegranates.
Worms like
                 gowns of teeth
writhe around
                 their bodies
undressing our
                 men from flesh.
I am afraid to dream
                 this up from the mud.
Taught to apologize after.
                 We enter each other,
sons of shame,
                 breaking like bread.
Boys' tongues like
                 beams of light
carving the rot
                 from silence.
Hair on my pillow
                 warmed by afternoon
sun. Bless your tender
                 fingers; a flood of
want. Cheeks filled
                 with bitter pith swallowed
like fruit. Bless
                 summer & spill its juice.
The sheets we stain,
                 we leave unwashed.

Thankfully, I Have Never Taken After My Father

Who dragged a freshly drained deer into the

               shed then instructed me to remove the stomach.

               Once I was in the heat of the beast,

I ripped thick sinew, fat, & muscle by hand. Then

he severed the heart’s tendons & touched

                                              the cold organ to my cheek. This proximity like

                                              a lead weight in my chest. He always wanted me to inherit

                               his instinct, like musk on a body bag--

                                                                                             death imagined &

                                                                             then death administered & then death taken

                                                                                            into the mouth.

After placing the ribs in the oven to roast, I felt the gun

like it tapped at the back of my skull,

                                                                                           resented
                                             my metal knowledge of its insides—how to cock a bullet

& prepare the spark, how to line the sight on

top of another body’s warmth,

                                                                                             where to miss, so it

                                                                                             suffers, & where to aim,

                                                                                             so my hands stay clean--

the order of things; Domain, Kingdom, Phylum,

Class, Order, Family—how a father can bend a son

over his knee & redden—on the day of that deer,

               in a rage, he grabbed my coat to clean

               the hunting knife, threatening more, & I sobbed at that fresh mark


               & I sob, still—like a bloodstain, I spill,               all over that

                            graceless memory,                        our backs bent over the opened

                                                           deer, arguing about how he ruined the heart, shrapnel proving the

                                           bad shot, how funny, my loveless father playing god is a tradesman,

            an expert in gut & exit, while I am prey

                              before the meal, threatened with violence while I learned its scent,

            left to wash the gunsmoke from my hair, to wonder

how I’ll ever come up with an excuse             for the blood.

Duncan Slagle is a queer poet and performer. He currently attends the University of Wisconsin-Madison through the First Wave Scholarship. His poems appear or are forthcoming in Black Napkin Press, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, & Cosmonauts Avenue. He loves birds. 

​Tricia Louvar lives in the Pacific Northwest and studied journalism, poetry, aesthetics, and documentary photography in college and beyond. She works in publishing as a visual artist and writer. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Brevity, Orion Online, Zyzzyva, and more.  tricialouvar.com

Artist Statement:  At a Saturday kaffeeklatsch, after splitting a piece of banana bread, I am the one nibbling pieces of its raw sugar left behind on the plate. Such an instantsummarizes my artistic impulses of focusing on the leftovers and the overlooked. I investigate the human condition and its relationship to impermanence with digital and analog tools.
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