2 Poems
shitty father’s day poem
did you know there’s a species
of male fruit bat that lactates
so the female doesn’t grow
too heavy with milk to fly,
or that flamingos agree on a nesting
site together and equally share
in their eggs’ incubation time;
did you know my father left
a few days after I was cut into the world,
that my mother healed alone while he
was playing keeper at a soccer tournament,
or that my husband was held by his neck
up a wall as a child for being a child,
his father a handsome, devout, christian man.
the male midwife toad gestates
beneath the skin of his back legs,
and others carry offspring, instead,
in the wet of their mouths;
how hard it must be for the busy
new father not to swallow
his eager little tadpoles whole.

al pastor
i imagine
my body
as the lamb
gyro cone
spinning
behind the
counter of
my favorite
greek café
how easy
it would be
to flay apart
in chips
and strips
the seasoned
the sodden
the tender
meat of me
Other Works
what’s in a mouth
by June Lin
... i am the duck tongue queen of this Chinese-Canadian suburb, / and the ducks in the river behind my house fear me ...
The Greatest Lie Ever Told
by John Banning
... I have fainted on the floor of a bathroom and woken up and gone into another bathroom and fallen asleep in there ...