Dave Caserio
To the Odd Boy,
On Reading Your First Book of Poetry
Well, some of us can't survive
our fathers and some fathers
can't survive their children.
We can count the mothers
in there too. It's a brutal thing
this business of procreation,
but that's the way it is. We go on
with what has been done to us,
what we do to ourselves, to others,
to make the life that might be ours,
and learn how to love the world,
despite itself, because of itself.
And that's the beginning
of what poetry is. And you
have found it and written it.
One of the kindest men I know.
Odd child who survived to sing
even as he weeps. Poet who is
my friend. And I am blessed
to say so.
Papa’s Legs
If I’d seen your father’s legs before we got married,
We’d never have married. They were dog hairy,
Dog skinny, and itchy as a fly under the sheets.
He had bumpy ankles and lumpy knees.
If he got a cramp in his calf
He’d stretch. He’d crab then un-crab
His arch, spread out his toes, and wiggle
The stub of his heel. Thigh to foot it looked
Like a bony python gagging on a pig and retching.
But I knew what was brewing
When he’d strut around in boxers
Pounding beers and whistling
Because he couldn’t hide the pucker of sweat
In the dimple of his knees or the moist
Alabaster sheen of his shinbones
Whenever he wanted me. I couldn’t help but stare.
How to Use Poetry to Tell Someone Off Without Getting Hit in the Face in Return
Some say reincarnation is true,
the order of all things,
that the spirit undying
comes back again
and again and again
in learning
then unlearning
then relearning
through the full measure
of the karmic wheel.
Possible even, that one
may incarnate
in two bodies at once
and live two separate lives.
But what are the rules?
What if those paths cross?
Across a crowded room
one sparkles at oneself.
One becomes utterly entranced
with one, until one finds oneself
alone in bed together, to give
new meaning—true
meaning—to the term,
“Go Fuck Yourself”,
again and again
and again.
Dave Caserio is the author of This Vanishing and Wisdom For A Dance In The Street. Caserio works with various community outreach poetry programs for Humanities Montana and Young Poets. He is co-editor of four volumes of I Am Montana: Student Reflections on Identity and Place. Publications include: Welcome to the Resistance: Poetry as Protest, Unearthing Paradise: Montana Writers in Defense of Greater Yellowstone, and Poems Across the Big Sky, Volume II. www.davecaserio.com
