By Scott Beal
they didn’t know my last thought
was thank god they weren’t in the car
that I thought of the times I’d cut off a Buick
with their bodies buckled in the backseat and seen EMTs
scrape up our wreckage on I-94
they didn’t know I heard their forks clink over crepes
in their stepfather’s kitchen
and saw sunlight on their faces
and I was so relieved that I didn’t feel
the wet steel where my bones should be
but I worried what it would be like for them
opening drawers in my bedroom
to find letters from a woman they’d never met
sex toys and lubricants empty cigarette packages
and wonder who their father had been
would they read the poems I’d written about them
and be angry I hadn’t asked their permission
or would they feel like we were finally
having a real conversation
Scott Beal is the author of Wait ‘Til You Have Real Problems (Dzanc Books, 2014). His poems have appeared recently or are forthcoming in The Collagist, Chattahoochee Review, Four Way Review, SiDEKiCK, and other journals. He teaches in the Sweetland Center for Writing at the University of Michigan and serves as Dzanc Writer-in-Residence at Ann Arbor Open School. He co-hosts a monthly reading series called Skazat! in Ann Arbor.
