Deadbeat

Sara Moore Wagner

Our father goes into the forest and loses
himself, climbs the nearest tree when
night finds him too tired to carry on.
Our father climbs the tree
because he is afraid
of the earth, and me
with this face like wilds—
Don’t feed him when he comes
shaky to your doorstep, pleads
to sleep in a corner. He wants
to destroy your house
as if it were a body, as if it were
my body. Wants to tear
you from your sheets with his
teeth, crusts that we
both are. Brother, you are so
fair, the palms of your hands
like new stones. You wreak
with axes. Cut him
back to where he came from,
leave him just
as he left us, lost
and trembling—Father,
moon, planet. Our father
who art these things,
our father, an outstretched hand,
a bone hand:
Chop it down.

© Sara Moore Wagner

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Sara Moore Wagner is the Cincinnati-based author of the chapbook Hooked Through (Five Oaks Press, 2017). Her poetry has appeared in many journals and anthologies, including Gulf Stream, Gigantic Sequins, Stirring, Reservoir, The Wide Shore, The Pittsburgh Poetry Review, and Arsenic Lobster, among others. She has been nominated for a Pushcart prize and was a recent finalist for the Edna St. Vincent Millay Prize. Find her at saramoorewagner.com.