For the Son I Never Had
The way you say “air conditioner” slays me
and when you’re older, the way you cut the wheel
to make a corner.
Why shouldn’t we talk about what never was?
Not because of a lack of love, but because of
something more opaque the color of a grey sky
in winter, how it bleeds into the ocean and at
some point they touch like the two unreal
entities they are.
I’ve spent my life inside a nice, calm man; you are
endlessly elegy and as I watch you run into the world
like a plow into a snow bank, I can’t help
but thank your mother for your blade.
When I get home, I will read this poem
over and over again to watch you rise
off the page like some mythical beast
all my flaws sewn into your chest.
Jefferson Navicky
Jefferson Navicky is the author of Antique Densities: Modern Parables & Other Experiments in Short Prose, which won the 2022 Maine Literary Award in Poetry, as well as the story collection, The Paper Coast, and the poetic novel, The Book of Transparencies. He is the archivist for the Maine Women Writers Collection. He lives in Freeport, Maine.
