Slur

 

God’s the potter,
I’m the clay,

our father lisps,
the Lord ain’t

through with me.
He can’t button

his shirt or lift
the fist he used

to slam down
on our supper

table—faggots
burn in hell!

& still calls us
each other’s names.

 

 

 

Tare

 

From Arabic
tarha, weight

of the container
deducted from

the gross,
to let the buyer

pay for only
what’s contained—

my violent,
emaciated father

on the scale
won’t take off

his shoes or suit,
my mother

subtracts
five pounds.

 

 

Snap

 

Sharp clamping
sound, teeth

biting down,
bone fractured

by a trap, cold
spell, curt remark,

rash act, what
he did before

he fired on
kids in class.

 

 

Slab

 

The blast
dissolves

nine stories,
shears off

the north
face: impaled

by steel,
pinned under

stone down
in the pit

where the day
care had been,

the bodies wait
to be laid out.

 

 

 

Hilary Sideris has recently published poems in Flock, The Lake, Rhino, and Salamander. She is the author of Most Likely to Die (Poets Wear Prada 2014) and The Inclination to Make Waves (Big Wonderful 2016). A new collection, Un Amore Veloce, will be published by Kelsay Books in 2019. She lives in Brooklyn and works as a professional developer and curriculum writer for The City University of New York’s CUNY Start program. Sideris has a B.A. in English literature from Indiana University and an MFA from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop.