"Father (Dad) Please Watch Over Me" by Shell Myers
Super Saturday
What we thought was cold
two months ago now
carves stream melt
through ploughed piles of snow,
rill trickling downhill
along the blanketed curb
like an underground river.
In the laundromat, machines
hum, roll their little red eyes
and damp blue cotton
blends, and on the TV Trump
is now a full-blown speaker
box, granite teeth
spreading across his face.
Pale as the obelisk’s tip,
he pierces low hanging clouds
with an expanding head.
Watching my clothing tumble
in circles, I can’t help but feel
we will be duped again.
We try to mark what he does not
say—the magician
uses only one hand, speaks and signs
with the other. It’s all farce
until we see our number
in red diamonds in his fingers,
in disbelief
that we wouldn’t miss the small moment
where it all happened, hook
on which no bait was hung.
Wet clothes lump
at the bottom of the washer’s porthole
like an unspilled tear,
and the morning news program
slings empathy over the branch
of an oak. Tied to the other
end of the rope is a bucket,
brimming with fresh water,
sloshing over our heads.
Pundits are talking
about this country’s thirst
and how relief is within reach,
while we’re all left to consider
how we would maneuver in a world
where in place of our faces,
neighbors see large white mouths
on ravenous bodies, lips
to the dirt, burying ourselves.
Lucian Mattison is an Argentinian American poet. His full-length collection, Peregrine Nation, won the 2014 Dogfish Head Poetry Prize from The Broadkill River Press. His poems appear or are forthcoming in The Adroit Journal, Four Way Review, Hobart, Muzzle, Nashville Review, and elsewhere online and in print. His fiction is soon to appear in Fiddleblack and Per Contra. He is an associate editor for Big Lucks. To read more visit Lucianmattison.com
Shell Myers was born in Elyria, Ohio, but now calls Philadelphia their home. They are a queer multimedia artist, voted most artistic in the 8th grade. They are passionate about emotional sensitivity, play, and subverting toxic masculinity. Shell is the Administrative Coordinator of Art & Art History at Drexel University. When they're not putting in that 9 to 5, they make time to create collages, paintings, photographs and drawings. You can find more of their work at www.shellmyers.com
