Fag spelled out sounds like effigy.

The poppet full of my stubble.

A slur sewn inside me

Rhyming. An exponential function

Is a never-ending climax. Child me

Cutting caltrops from tin cans:

Grandma’s gentle consequence

Of unboxing the war stories.

None of my adolescent weapons saved me

From the inventions of my failures:

The poem that I refuse to write. The library

I make in its absence. The boats borne back

To the ocean. A destination far from myself–

I stood on that dock. I jumped and did not fall.

I milled the memory in search of a lesson.

All I learned was that I lived. With myself,

I told myself something else. Something

Promising. A tale where all the hurt

Meant something more. It didn’t. I did.

Zack Lesmeister