When My Dad Says My Poetry Is Pornographic by Dorsey Craft

Sometimes I say fucking when what I mean is I taste brine but there’s no ocean

When My Dad Says My Poetry Is Pornographic

by Dorsey Craft¹

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He means an orange peeled in leather,
a face scraped red with pomegranate seeds,
the ribcage sound of wind through bamboo.
He means his eye is on me, and by extension,
God’s and that surveillance is a blessing, a cardinal
flicking through crepe myrtle, a wool blanket
soaked in gasoline to cover my naked face.
He means I described my violent birth,
that I should go back to church and pray.
What was that song we used to moan
in the pews? For his eye is on the sparrow,
so I know he watches me? Douse the mirrors
with black silk. Don’t think about heat
death or the water that cools the gears
of the machine that generates the words
my students pray to me through the air
between our houses while they swipe
or scroll or bleed or weep. What my dad
means is he is going to die someday,
and my poet’s duty is to get that money shot—
low angle, faint light through muslin curtains,
yellow gold of his wedding band against
the withered red finger. Sometimes I say
fucking when what I mean is I taste brine
but there’s no ocean, just a fragment
of wisteria wafting over a raccoon corpse
on the freeway. Give me the purple spill
of euphony, soggy and throbbing. Salt me.
Sort me. Separate the water from the smoke.
Like God, I shoot and watch, watch and shoot.
I shot a sparrow off a powerline once. I shot
a boy in the foot once. I shot myself once,
took the camera down and took aim
at the fucking truth, the fucking bullseye.

1. First published in The Adroit, Issue 54, 2025.