one

strange son

I am a youth of pale shins and oblique shoulders, matrons retreat from me bonneted with silence,

eyes piously aslant like orientals woven in a cloth, even though I am as occidental

as a river in Kansas

and held my gun for valor.

It is often difficult to tell

if the rope around my neck was meant for a thief or a sacrificial goat. Even I might know, were I composed of sublimation and zeal, and not merely a sum of ever-lost and found complexities.

Grimmer begotten ones dare come to ask me where my landmarks will be, where my premises.

Should I then burn the ivy that swaddles my tower,

and expose the inner mortal in a time when no one respects a wicker cage full of starlings?

by David Cornel DeJong

16