New Poem by Bobby Parker

Bug

When I ask him to tell me about love

he channels his mother and screams

until the bath water is so cold

my skin feels like a work of fiction.

After dark I ask, ‘Why is there

a camera in our bedroom?’

and he says, ‘It’s so the sleep doctors

can monitor my night terrors.’

Then he smiles in such an odd way

that his mouth, his runaway mouth

reminds me of a horizontal line

drawn by shell-shocked hand.

Bobby Parker is a British poet.

Comments

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