Selected Poems | Cameron Morse

T-Shirts

Diminutive elderly
lady in the fuck
glioblastoma t-shirt

this almost obscene
late April snow
how wrong we were
about the spring

*

Grandma Morse grew
rude with dementia
at the sight of a Back
Yard Burger would
insist “I want a Back
Yard Burger” what
ever Mom had prepared
said she’d “choke it
down” eating the food
off our plates

*

I’m not drunk says another
shirt I’m not winking
at you I have brain cancer

An ant on Theo’s fingertip
blizzard bound refugee
and Theo wanting so badly

to shovel what by after
noon will have with dark
splotches

disappearance

watered the lawn

*

I swear Grandpa did
wink at me after we picked
him up at the adult
daycare center convulsing

Let My Tongue

Let my tongue be freely
infant. As my baby

daughter, let my tongue
baby-doo baby-dum

daughter son. Let my tongue
in morning heaven

hum vacuum
clean. But let my tongue

be orphan father clean.
Let one less father

cling. Father-lessened
heavenly absent of any city

name the infant enters in
to be interred as my coffin

closes lose my name, loose
my shadow free. Easy

as you say is Thy yoke
and egg white and every

Father’s Day bouquet
another omelet

excuse to eat sour cream
culminates empty

culm now vibrant light
in brevity.

Hiccup Theory

Hiccup as sudden
interruption
a rupture

of breath breach
in continuity
a sneeze

*

Dad suffering from
hiccups from
chemo

upside down would
“chug-a-lug”

as if waterboarding
himself his trick
was not to     breathe

*

Diaphragm spasm
muscle partition
inside me may I ask you
to scare me please
make them      stop

the messaging barrage

bombardment

My mind is under
attack is over
whelmed

*

The vax activates
cancer cells it’s happening
to a friend messages
Dad Naomi Wolf on Fox
News Monday

a conspiracy of wolves
exorcized foxes

Cameron Morse is Senior Reviews editor at Harbor Review and the author of eight collections of poetry. His first collection, Fall Risk, won Glass Lyre Press’s 2018 Best Book Award. His latest is The Thing Is (Briar Creek Press, 2021).