West Trade Review: "Selves-Portrait as End of Boyhood" by Benjamin Bartu

Benjamin Bartu

Benjamin Bartu is a poet & disability studies researcher. Associate editor at Palette Poetry, he is the author of the chapbook Myriad Reflector (2023), finalist for the Poetry Online Chapbook Contest. His poetry has been nominated for Best of the Net, and has appeared or is forthcoming in The Journal, Sonora Review, HAD, nat.brut, Tahoma Literary Review, Guesthouse, & elsewhere. He lives in Oakland, California.

Selves-Portrait as End of Boyhood

a fallow waltz takes us past

monotonous fields softened

by our upbringing,

sure as a songbook upon

the casing of a guitar tapered as the bones

of the fish we were once convinced we’d find

if we only dipped our fingers beneath the rippling of the shenandoah.

take your hands, soft as lambs’ ears.

sink them, deep into the headwaters the cirro-

cumulus eggshells about.

what do you find? a turkey warbling in a field of yellow grass.

small brown and white and blue birds

trading turns at the bird feeder.

a man who’s ready to feed you and clean up after you and build

the pétanque court of your dreams.

a woman who will bring you plants and place them in sunlight

and water the beds and fill the bird feeders when they empty.

so they are plenty. they are the future.

i didn’t ask for this, you tell me narcissus in our hair,

mountain winds in our chests,

my spine a dime store romance tucked beneath your palm.

will you meet me in those sweet blue fields of mushroom and cane?

no, lavender, no, backward half step,

i don’t think so. child of hope,

i plant a fig tree in the yard.

once in the space between wish and world i couldn’t bury a thing.

now look at me, out there in my overalls. look where my hands go.

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