I want so much to be with you. I know it will take a while. We never had a day where we were together for a long time, but to have a day where I’m in your home, that has a nice ring to it. So call me when you have a moment, because I love you, you’re my sweet son.
—Father’s voice message
I want, also, overmuch with gusto, to imbibe what-have-you. Of in-the-know: to swill. Intake of worthwhile awe. To never be clad in workaday or austere innerwear, rather to gun for a lifelong harvesttime. —But it’s finito, it’s the Mohave, doomsday here in the nursing home, all Golgothas and thin ice and alarm-ring tenuto with its Picasso birdcall to time when you shave. A moment ago
I had cause to love.
Now a pasture of plumy
meadowsweet is poison.
Alex Chertok has published poems in Ploughshares, Kenyon Review Online, Southern Review, Beloit Poetry, and Copper Nickel. He currently teaches through the Cornell Prison Education Program.
