Frederick Pollack
Condolence
(We heard about your son ... )
Thanks. But you know, he isn’t dead –
he just went to spend more time
with his mother, who was always more
sensitive, or ambitious – in any case
more attuned to him. He’ll be able to say,
convincingly, in a few decades,
he wants to spend more time with his family.
Or no, he didn’t go to her.
He rejected all my values
and joined some alt-right sect.
They live low-level corporate
or upper-barista lives, then march
and picket under runic banners, hoping to
break heads. You can say it’s a phase,
but for me it’s eternity. Or else he
no longer wants to be my son, but
my daughter, and is getting the money together,
so I won’t see him for a while.
Do male-to-female transes think
of themselves as someone’s daughter or as
new beings, self-created?
I really don’t know. I mean no
disrespect to transes, or to any life
that ends. He may have gone
to pass out antivirals and clean water
in Africa, and he’s so far in the bush
there’s no signal. I wanted to do that,
years ago, but now I think
what’s the point. Actually, he’s hanging
out with the wild turkeys that still
inhabit central Connecticut …
but no. That was the cat.
