Groundcover
by Kerry Kurdziel
This concrete has been here for a while.
It is a dam that collects dead leaves, dismembered
ant limbs. Worlds quake. Perish
in its pockmarked pockets. I suppose
we all have fathers. A broken line poured through
the wild fallow of us. Or was I the line?
A soft teething terror. You leave
voicemails insisting that you are a good man –
that I am cruel, deranged. The saddest thing of all:
this is love. You just can’t love
anything without carving into it your initials.
I have not yet found the language
to call you what you are.
So I don’t. I have all of your rage
and none of your words. Still –
you ransack the country of my childhood
plant your stake inside my unsown home
desperate to find the way I grew.
The way I tore. Through you.
It is a dam that collects dead leaves, dismembered
ant limbs. Worlds quake. Perish
in its pockmarked pockets. I suppose
we all have fathers. A broken line poured through
the wild fallow of us. Or was I the line?
A soft teething terror. You leave
voicemails insisting that you are a good man –
that I am cruel, deranged. The saddest thing of all:
this is love. You just can’t love
anything without carving into it your initials.
I have not yet found the language
to call you what you are.
So I don’t. I have all of your rage
and none of your words. Still –
you ransack the country of my childhood
plant your stake inside my unsown home
desperate to find the way I grew.
The way I tore. Through you.
Kerry Kurdziel is a poet currently living in the Greater Boston area. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Columbia Journal, Bear Review, and Euphony Journal. When she is not writing, you can find Kerry trying her hand at woodworking or going to an ABBA cover band concert.