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Ryan durrett — April 8 2024

This is a super rough draft of a poem that I wrote earlier this week. I had a lot of trouble titling it, ending it, and establishing through lines to bind the piece together, but the concept was one that flowed out rather easily. I’m not necessarily expecting this poem will make it into my final project, especially as I am unsure, as of right now, what that project might be. However, the piece was written with the course concept of “code-switching” in mind, as it relates to my childhood, and growing up gay with a hypermasculine, blue collar father. I’d like to work more on this piece, and hopefully tie up some of the conceptual loose ends in order to express this experience more tactfully, thoroughly, and poignantly.

Unfree

I am your child how David was born of the stone,
more hieroglyph
than son,
carved by tooth rot and box nail, by whittle,
from a rosestem
with inward-growing thorns. When I was little
I would trace
your widow’s peak in the shower fog
and impose myself
beneath it, and when I was older
I couldn’t remember why.
Bully born loser, you’d strip rooms
of silence like copper
from thermoplastic, and I’d watch you from afar
in the front yard, built like Boxer
and restless as all Hell.
I wish I’d paid better attention the day
they boiled you down to glue— now I can’t
lose you.

And whenever it is we die, you will outlive
us both
like our home’s cement frame. Laid bricks
across your grave
won’t seal you up— you will always
put my ass to work
like your ghost will always bob on rivers,
letting go the single Yuba fry
we pulled,
like you will always shape my mouth
to tell my baby
to look where the fuck I’m pointing.
Find me,
and I will be always too slow
to take whatever it is
you’re holding—
my eyes
are on a man
with a widow’s peak somewhere down the road.