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I Thought This Was a Cold House

 

Is she a father splinter:

one who comes to every class

as a face on a poster

or more so a carrier

who sidles like sidlers do?

 

If someone called me that name

I’d invert with some outrage.

I am not your mother-boy.

What is this, then? Being Made.

What is this, then? Compulsions.

 

Everywhere are everywhere

things. Images of eyes are

eyes and we just don’t settle.

We go after her cold house.

Why do we hate old women?

 

You open an old woman

and there are at least ten kids

and one hundred old men-types

holding tens of tens of kids

while their bodies slowly grow.

 

I don’t care like them kids there.

Song be: This Is New Today

this new old man, a new boy,

a new boy/girl and woman.

You, you, you. You new, you new.

from Consolation and MirthFind more by Ish Klein at the library

Copyright © 2015 Ish Klein
Used with the permission of Canarium Books.

Published in Ish Klein Poems

This program is supported in part by a grant from the Idaho Humanities Council, a State-based program of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this (publication, website, exhibit, etc.) do not necessarily represent those of the Idaho Humanities Council or the National Endowment for the Humanities.