To be honest, I may not
be much better than an insect,
masturbating while my son
cries himself to sleep. What art
Thou to me? Twists of cirro
-stratus, wisps and twists, a string
of geese unraveling below
the moon’s better half, nothing
stationary. You cut in
and out, a strange frequency,
a face hidden among the clouds,
a lamb’s, perhaps, shorn
and shriveled, scalded pink with wrinkles.
Why must you hide yourself? What’s
that all about? Augustine wants to see you
naked. What when You laid
these larva under my toenails;
what when you swam upstream
into my urethra, what should I want?
What art Thou to me? asks
Augustine. I don’t even know
what I am to myself.
Cameron Morse was diagnosed with a glioblastoma in 2014. With a 14.6 month life expectancy, he entered the Creative Writing Program at the University of Missouri—Kansas City and, in 2018, graduated with an M.F.A. His poems have been published in numerous magazines, including New Letters, Bridge Eight, Portland Review and South Dakota Review. His first poetry collection, Fall Risk, won Glass Lyre Press’s 2018 Best Book Award. His latest is Terminal Destination (Spartan Press, 2019). He lives with his wife Lili and son Theodore in Blue Springs, Missouri, where he serves as poetry editor for Harbor Review. For more information, check out his Facebook page or website.