Originally published in South Florida Poetry Journal
years of one man’s life and the found, fathered,
and frayed unraveled like the edge of an Alabama dress
mother got from a thrift store in Selma, the summer
they bought me from a preacher’s daughter. In 1957,
Methodist sounded like skinny white men wearing
starched black suits with patten leather shoes shiny
as the lie her father told about why her belly was big
as a melon but only my parents were invited to the picnic.
A crownless king with a lightbulb head entered the world
wearing snazzy bow ties and matching suspenders
to shadow his Saddle Oxford shoes. Adopted meant
special meant we chose you to rule the lost and untouched
parts of a world they carried inside. It took all those years
of tender turmoil to build a kingdom of kindness and rage
where this lightbulb head could shine.
