[So all the dead dads walk into a bar]
I say
grief is universal, say, so all the dead dads walk into a bar—
but that’s a bad joke. It’ll choke me.
Mouth open, I listen for someone else talking
about all the things I can’t or won’t or can’t or won’t.
I only know small violences: 1) my mother shot on a U. City sidewalk
in a drive-by paintballing, the lid hung over her blue eye
like a fat purple fig; 2) the neighborhood boys outlined
in sun, their faces black balloons, and me on my back
in the grass, locked up by their semi-automatic
Super Soakers. All I know of injustice is luxury—
everything we did we did to each other we did
to ourselves. My father injected liquid for air
until he leaked. Because he decided
he deserved it. Because he decided he deserved it.
by Katie Moulton
grief is universal, say, so all the dead dads walk into a bar—
but that’s a bad joke. It’ll choke me.
Mouth open, I listen for someone else talking
about all the things I can’t or won’t or can’t or won’t.
I only know small violences: 1) my mother shot on a U. City sidewalk
in a drive-by paintballing, the lid hung over her blue eye
like a fat purple fig; 2) the neighborhood boys outlined
in sun, their faces black balloons, and me on my back
in the grass, locked up by their semi-automatic
Super Soakers. All I know of injustice is luxury—
everything we did we did to each other we did
to ourselves. My father injected liquid for air
until he leaked. Because he decided
he deserved it. Because he decided he deserved it.
by Katie Moulton
Katie Moulton's creative work appears or is forthcoming in The Journal, Hobart, Quarterly West, Ninth Letter Online, XO Jane, the Village Voice, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of a Bread Loaf work-study scholarship, the Devil's Lake Driftless Prize in Fiction, and fellowships from OMI International Arts Center, Indiana University, and Vermont Studio Center. Born and raised in St. Louis, she lives in Bloomington, Indiana, where she works for a historic theater and as a radio DJ.
