On Fatherhood
You brought me to life and taught me to live.
My fingers trace the frame, bone white
with “Dec 67” inked vertically on the border
and I read your smile—it says to me,
“Love
is the most potent moral force in life,”
and for a second, I leave my world of disorder
behind, and I return your smile, to say “I agree.”
The twin photos tell what I cannot write:
in suit or well worn tee, never bitter—
a steady ship upon a capricious sea,
a glove
on frigid hand, providing warmth despite
white-knuckled resistance from her—
Mom, or any of your three.
I’ll never understand how you’re always right,
yet I refuse to question it. I think getting older
means choosing the good to see
above
the bad, which tends to burn forever bright
in all cases but yours. These pictures smolder
with prolific love, potent as potpourri.
That’s your legacy: to love and to fight
for the preservation of that love. To shoulder
the burdens of so many.
I’m in awe of
everything—your grit, wit, and light—
but my ride is here, and Boston’s getting colder
so I grab my down coat, and the photos. They come with me.
Plath Imitation
Seven silvered fruitworm beetles
drill holes into the apple’s chest.
Hairy with knives, pale larvae labor
and feed, feed. Chiseled,
the god fruit falls and death
bells toll over the battered pasture.
I empty my hands of seeds to grasp
the object goldened by the dusk,
and, raising it to my eye, I see
“for the fairest” inscribed in rotting flesh
that breathes with creatures rushed
by instinct, born instantaneously.
In counting seven brick-red bodies,
neither desire nor amusement saturate me;
Instead, I itch for a cigarette and blindness.
My wrinkled fingers, storied
with eternal overuse, scream
of discord. They tell of Eris,
so I drop the apple. Blameless,
it rolls, rolls across black roots and disappears.
Only, then, I collapse too
and roll, roll out of time’s troubled nets,
across black-smocked hills, until my fears
of age-rotten beauty burst like overripe fruit.
Dark Arches
To find me is to recognize my brows,
before your mind has recognized my face.
In seas of sweat and sound, their mark endows
a seeker with two dark arches to chase.
In my attempts to tweeze, to wax, or shave,
I lack a true opponent’s deft and drive.
An hour in, my white flag starts to wave,
no match to wire hairs that grow like chives
above alleged “windows to my soul,”
a phrase Armenian people may contest.
Our tired eyes convey emotion’s toll,
but only brows can tell you all the rest.
My genetics refuse to suppress
the quiet strength that blood-tied Hayk possess.
4o Carlton St., Rm. 10
For Christine
Post T-track heart attack
and the dreaded ascent
of sunken marble stairs
that creak with each step
I reach a small apartment
sandwiched somewhere between
Heaven, Hell, and a dispensary
With a deadbeat’s grin I greet
our temperamental A/C unit
the shower head that dribbles
tepid water when off
a small stink bug that sits
atop my laundry fortress
reciting Langston Hughes
In front of the bay window
my sister updates her planner
scanning pages of some feminist treatise
with a blue-black pen
ignoring the suffocating cocktail
of pollen, dust, and soy candles
that envelopes her workspace
Eyes watering, throat itching
I stick my head in the freezer
and I’m back to Earth
though still entirely alien
in this town called Brookline
within this county called Norfolk
on Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot
“A mere mote of dust
suspended in a sunbeam”
but I think our planet’s splendor lies
in an apartment on 40 Carlton St.
sandwiched somewhere between
Heaven, Hell, and a dispensary
up a flight, then left, to Room 10
Two vintage wooden chairs
hand-woven by some goddess
with a surgeon’s precision
render the cosmos inconsequential
you’ll understand—
turn your telescope from the stars
to these earthly delights:
Trader Joe’s peanut-butter-filled pretzels
sprawled across our coffee table
the kitschy pink oriental rug
and a piss-yellow cookie jar
that unlikely served its true purpose
probably holding coins or something creepier
like toe-nail clippings or missing teeth
Grace Lenahan is a third-year undergraduate student at Boston College studying English and Women’s and Gender Studies in the Morrissey College of Arts and Sciences. Born and raised in the small industrial town of Scranton, Pennsylvania, where a bar and church can be found on every corner, Grace centers her collegiate education on the convergence of social justice, world literacy, and public policy. Her favorite poetic form is the Shakespearean sonnet, her aspiration is to be a lawyer, and her feminism is intersectional.