Son Says
Last night I was a jaguar
escaped from the zoo.
My teeth gleamed like moonlight spilled
through barbed wire. I walked across
the cracked copper soil of your backlands
and nosed the dirt for your rifle-trails
found instead my voice burrowed in your bones.
You stood anvil-fixed and said my name
as if it were a knife for cutting out buckshot.
Before you could remember how to breathe
my teeth made your neck leak.
I hold your last cough in my jaw.
Seann F. Weir graduated from the University of Missouri-Kansas City with a B.A. in Creative Writing. He was the winner of the 2015 Kay Murphy Prize for poetry. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Menacing Hedge, Bear Review, Meat For Tea, Juked, and Bayou. He lives and writes in Kansas City, Missouri.