You knew what you’d done right away, buried your head,
crossed arms across your thin chest like a roadblock
and we pretended it never happened, as if our lungs didn’t collapse
into each other, as if the oxygen hadn’t swept under
the classroom door, as if the fuck-yous you’d been whispering
all semester didn’t tattoo themselves on my fingertips
like false DNA: I am not your father.
I am not the man who earned your scorn, but if you need
a fencepost to hang your fury, I’ll bury my legs in the earth.
I’ll wear his face like a mask, even if you’ve only seen him
in the shadows behind photographs that were never taken.
When I etch a failing grade on an essay,
know that your father has failed
you, but when you score high, know
it’s you, your economy of vigor,
of fuck-yous piled like a high-rise
over me
and your father,
both of us you deserve to forget.
Today, when I locked the classroom behind us,
I drove home, blindly, breathless, crossed my arms
over my own son’s thin chest, pulled him tight
and tried to find oxygen enough to say the love-yous
too many men bury in the deep dark.
We are all tin men hoping for hearts.
Brian Baumgart’s collection of poems, Rules for Loving Right, was released from Sweet Publications in 2017, and his prose and poetry have appeared in a number of print and online journals, including Noctua Review, Cleaver, SLAB, Ruminate, Journal of Wild Culture, and previously in Whale Road Review. He is the director of the A.F.A. program in creative writing at North Hennepin Community College, just outside Minneapolis, and is 2018 artist-in-residence at the University of Minnesota Cedar Creek Ecological Science Reserve. He has an M.F.A. from Minnesota State University, Mankato. His son adores mythological monsters and cryptids, and his daughter has learned to croak “Redrum” while angling her finger at strangers; he will gladly accept responsibility for these children.