Some Other Solid Thing

His sum is a balance I cannot hold                 its boundaries have not been
set, the stream tells me how easily you break             can be reshaped

My father was a dented helmet          a rifle pointed skyward         brutal yes
I admit it. The cat slinks into the next room              ears back even the jay
in the neighbor’s yard flies from the bombardment        My father’s dusty face

the moon. When I start placing my hand        within the frame, not one thing
changes. So much goes into defending           the roundness, the trackless

loop of our rhetoric. He did                 the best he could                     as we all do
but we know words are empty luminosity       The heart suffers like a coin
The moon was foil & crooked anyhow            Until I took the early shift at work

 
I forgot what the moon could do          with dark         learned the motor’s hollow
what the tire spends creeping               the gravel drive, backing away

from the house as easily as pulling off my shirt           spreading the pale
show of my chest        There is no ground        no home, but the sound
of his fists, a firmament built              on percussion

I look at the light on water, a moving gleam                a narrow stretch
of shine           some other solid thing           to lay myself upon.

Jory Mickelson is a queer, nonbinary writer whose first book, Wilderness//Kingdom, was the inaugural winner of the Evergreen Award Tour from Floating Bridge Press. They are also the winner of the 2020 High Plains Book Award. Their work has been published in Court Green, Painted Bride Quarterly, jubilat, Sixth Finch, Diode Poetry Journal, The Rumpus, Ninth Letter, Vinyl Poetry, and other journals. They are the recipient of an Academy of American Poets Prize and were awarded fellowships from the Lambda Literary Foundation and The Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of New Mexico. Jory can be followed at jorymickelson.com.