Morning Song
BY DAVID RODERICK
Holy shit—it’s 6am and my bones feel
mortared to the floor. My daughters wake.
They flit to my chest and peck my carrion
heart. They’re my business these days
beyond balding and sculpting
my dad bod. I’ve reached the late stage
when two beers will hang me
over. Very quickly and without explanation,
a plot of lawn can turn brown. I fake
my death on the rug. In tighty-whities
I’m the crows’ target. I’m a king lying in state.
Pink pajamas laugh and pinch me
to life. I rise, porcupine a mango, crack eggs.
When we’re long gone, sang Solomon,
as birds reaped the fruit from his trees,
the grass will be ours, and will only half-forget us.
Greenpeace Dad Bod
BY DAVID RODERICK
It’s sundown, human sundown.
The whales mean cash and are almost gone.
I’m here on the water with my banner and horn,
ready to run
interference, to take a shot
harpoon or two for the team.
Maybe I’ll end myself
and broadside this ship
straight out of one of Ahab’s bony dreams.
It yields the sweetly dark stink of death,
this hull made and sailed by real men.
For Christ’s sake, I can hardly swim.
This is a young man’s game,
but the more my body ages, the safer it is
to chance my nothingness
on the sea’s mad chop, a lunatic bobbing
along in a little patched boat.
I was so much more reasonable before
I had kids.
What will they say to me
on the couch, eating chips,
when we hear that the last of the grandest species
is finally gone?
I don’t want to be a lighthouse
father moaning from a frozen coast.
It’s sundown, frantic sundown,
and men in yellow helmets hose me
from above. I get it.
They need to feed their families
so they aim down at my slicker
and thick boots.
I steer between their bow
and a racing pod, the sapphire flash of barnacles,
flailing flukes.
We carnivore. We shark.
A river of blood pours from the ship’s bilge.
The whales are too sublime to let alone
their oil’s oil and bone’s bone,
their grandeur, the intimacy of their swim
together, their girth,
so far beyond us just as our bodies are so far beyond
(dad bods all)
with such rich and golden fat
hoarded inside,
we could cut and render
and light
a whole damned century with it.
