I expose my lowly
clay pot, my coat
of skin to the jolts
of the wind. Nubby
leaves of Chinese
parsley waggle
in the patio table pot.
I tend to my little plot
of flesh, peeling off
the polyester dress socks,
pulling on the crinkly
sleeves of a windbreaker.
Lowly as it is, I love my body
as Christ loved his
hands, his dark arboreal
recesses. It’s a shock
to be born. Omi spends
most of her time screaming
at her body, its rolls of leg
fat, the creases in her groin.
I look down at the baby
in my arm crook, her kinked
brow, her mewling lower
lip. My two-year-old runs
full force into the driveway’s
pained face, its painful way
of saying if you ask me
to hold you, I will texture
the palms of your hands,
splotch and bleed them,
not gladly or with any sort
of malice, but just because I am
a driveway and you are made
of screeching eels. Maybe
this touch of your knee
to my beautiful blend of tiny
stones is the essence, the gravel bed
of Christ below the wood
form of the cross.
–
Cameron Morse was diagnosed with a glioblastoma in 2014. With a 14.6-month life expectancy, he entered the creative writing program at the University of Missouri—Kansas City and, in 2018, graduated with an M.F.A. His poems have been published in numerous magazines, including New Letters, Bridge Eight, Portland Review, and South Dakota Review. His first poetry collection, Fall Risk, won Glass Lyre Press’s 2018 Best Book Award. His latest is Baldy (Spartan Press, 2020). He lives with his wife Lili and two children in Independence, Missouri, where he serves as the reviews editor at Harbor Review and the poetry editor at Harbor Editions.