Simcha//henbit marches up every highway median//my mother’s Persian
lilac breathes soft as prayer in the backyard corner//right now I’m shunted
away in concrete, brick, and uptown robbery stats//surrounded by other
people’s money/Simcha when we ran in the woods behind my parents’/
baldfaced/cherubic//we were looking for the meaning of these grim
dreamers we would fatten into//expecting they would live up to some vague
future ghost we formed of them//You know, that kind of anti-
image//unreal yesterday through the click & shutter of an old
ViewMaster//Stills of a forest fire//Old people withdraw their cash &
scowl/Bullet hole still in the carpet//That’s why a security guard with a
Hogan stache and Brooklyn accent sits in the lobby//Simcha does a father’s
love come with a dollar?//Say a prayer for me when I can’t//Which is
now// 

                                    at dusk
                                    you can almost see
                                    god’s beard

                                    almost

Seth Copeland is the managing editor of petrichor. His poems have been spotted & scheduled in Yes Poetry, Kestrel, Crab Fat, SOFTBLOW, and The Birds We Piled Loosely. He teaches in the Oklahoma City metro.