In order to view this poem with the line breaks the author intended, we suggest reading it on a computer screen or in landscape orientation on your phone or tablet.

Daughter and Father, an Abstract

Above desert scrub grass
I’ve learned to sleep on my dead

Parent and child, we inherit silence and slice it
We spear ourselves on the pointy end of difference

My father isn’t finished with me yet
In the geometry of love’s torsion

Once we were escape artists lusting for the swill of space travel
Now a poem written in spider scrawl thin as cobwebs

Here I am again picking through the rubble of us
A crimson shard there a gray brick here dust not detail

A crimson shard there a gray brick here dust not detail
Here I am again picking through the rubble of us

Now a poem written in spider scrawl thin as cobwebs
Once we were escape artists lusting for the swill of space travel

In the geometry of love’s torsion
My father isn’t finished with me yet

We spear ourselves on the pointy end of difference
Parent and child, we inherit silence and slice it

I’ve learned to sleep on my dead
Above desert scrub grass

—
Melanie Perish — a gender-fluid crone — is interested in poetry and poets. Her work has appeared in Sequestrum, The Meadow, Rust & Moth, CALYX, Discretionary Love, Caesura, and other small press publications. Melanie’s work also appeared on Nevada’s Humanities’ Double Down Blog, and she was recently a featured poet for Moon Tide Press. Passions & Gratitudes (Black Rock Press, 2011), The Finishing Poems (Meridian Press, 2017), and Foreign Voices, Native Tongues (Single Wing Press/Blurb, 2021) are her collections. Melanie is a member of Poets & Writers. She believes reading makes you beautiful.

Know anyone who might appreciate reading Melanie’s poem?
Why not share the link to this page?

Click here to return to the Table of Contents.