Fishing With Dad
and he rolls back shoulders to hoist
the rod towards the bridge, wound round his right side, he
uncoils vertebrae, flings
dropped wires above my head, tuckered treats, one might think
we’re not even together
with the distance travelled of the nylon but
we are. In the light, threads look rainbow
in their shaking. I eat pickles on the string and dad’s jaws
sink on my teeth asking when’s the last
time I went to the dentist? What are these stains you know
there’s whitening procedures
and I’m frilly gills sashaying in the dress with the tag
still on, the tag becomes a rope around
my fists and I’m dragging through sharp rocks up to the boated
ripples blustering waves dad says we are
fishing so there’s no time for making statements, like every fish
is just bursting messages in glossy scales, alphabet
lustrous blood, I don’t bleed with dad but he’s always asking who
influenced me who pushed me to become
like this, like what? feminine. It’s not who you really are,
son. It’s getting dark. I have anemones
to hide in. He says, I worry about you, wearing those pearls,
like he notices their sheen in the giant ocean.
Aren’t you tired of drawing attention to yourself?
We bob in the surf, listening
for what to kill so we can eat together tonight.
Josh and His Family and Me and My Family
Shelton and Blake, identical twins, both coming
out at the same time! Preethi tells her mom
she’s a lesbian at the supermarket 🙂 seafood
tanked behind them. Cora creates a presentation
to come out as nonbinary to their parents
in which the metaphors, every example, is hippos.
Late night, the laptop screen shimmers like hippos’
skin painting the walls. I watch videos of coming
out stories instead of sleeping, watch parents
cry or hug or scream or laugh or sass or mom
knew it but dad angry some presentation
of responses, some burp burp oh no seafood
stink on my pillow, I think about seafood
and how, growing up, I didn’t eat it, but hippos
do, like I do now too, laying, watching the presentation
in my mind of me, at the table, 17 and coming
out saying, I’m gay, love me, love me, but mom
didn’t, dad was just angry and maybe parents
should just stay on youtube, maybe parents
should watch Please Like Me where I see food
names the title of every episode, I smile while mom
suicidal and Josh, comic boy who moves with hips
clumsily through life, in Season 3, Episode 2, Josh coming
to terms that coming out is a joke, Josh makes presentation
makes Josh's boyfriend fake come out to Josh's dad, presentation
heightened with piano, acting lessons, parents
who never got it right now do it perfectly, gloriously, coming
out now a novelty joke instead of rustling seafood
out the teeth of a dog, out the teeth of the hippos
I sprinted away when it failed, when my mom
looked at photos of me, crying around the house like mom
thought I was dead, which was not the presentation
like I’d practiced, which is never what the hippos
swim like at the zoo, which is never what parents
want: for their kids to be gay, or for them to eat seafood
breaking jewish traditions, or to scream at Josh coming
out too perfection, my presentation never recovered,
rainy hippos combing for seafood and my fingers reach
for my parents, my mom, I can’t close the screen
Sam Herschel Wein (he/they) is a 2022 Pushcart Prize winning poet. Their third poetry chapbook, Butt Stuff Flower Bush, is faggotly forthcoming from Porkbelly Press. They are an MFA student in poetry at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. He edits the journals Underblong and Grist. Recent poems can be found in Muzzle Magazine, Waxwing Mag, and Shenandoah, among others.