Nathan Fako

Like a Reed Made of Grass

Hurt Boy
I find you, and I tire of you

I tire of your rag-and-bone doctrine:
how any bloom ends in dry slaughter—
don’t you see beauty isn’t twice itself for being fleet?
your spectrums deflate me,
all that healing sought
in sunrise, a cigarette, the pills, the palmist, the poems, the pithy
textured memory of your father’s hands as they lift you
from the baptismal font,                tip forward, look:

the field of cotton in boll you stared at
for a whole afternoon, as if you could know
any tangible place

as if by being careful your way out of suffering could be
clear, spannable—poor tunnel,

light moves through you
goes someplace

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Nathan Fako (he/they) is a former high school teacher. He currently lives in Ohio where he is pursuing an MFA at Bowling Green State University. His work has been published in various journals such as The Rumpus, HAD, Whale Road Review and elsewhere.