by Ed Doerr
Put it in my mouth, Daddy:
absence, a communion wafer.
Daddy, sanctify me.
Baptize me in deceit.
A hand on the throat,
a lip ribboned with blood.
Your calloused fingers
scrape my teeth—
smoke licks the walls
in the rooms of my heart.
Make me gag on it:
a place at the table,
dead moths for eyes?
Rile me into a bruise—
pain is truth, Daddy,
& this one bites,
cold steel on skin:
it’s an empty chair, Daddy.
Love is an empty chair.
Ed is a teacher and the author of 'Sautéing Spinach With My Aunt' (Desert Willow Press, 2018). He was selected as a featured poet for Cathexis Northwest Press. Other words can be found in Water/Stone Review, Hippocampus Magazine, One Teen Story, Perhappened, Drunk Monkeys, Flypaper Lit, & several more. Readers can follow him on Twitter (@EdDoerrWrites) and visit his website (eddoerr.com).