The Innisfree Poetry Journal

www.innisfreepoetry.org

by Richard Lee Zuras

Rogue Soprano

He trolleys in lamenting his book-bag—shakes,

drops the innumerable pictographs, splays

them, conking the floor like paralytic weights,

as if our Maine bungalow were 

his own private—“Mr. Sipe keeps telling our whole grade

‘There’s a rogue soprano hiding out in the altos.’”

He smiles—

There is a certain hokiness when my son imitates

his teachers—an affection not lost on either party.

He is vamping now . . . .

A tuft of auburn hair will not find

agency (his head blossoming, rooting, inside and out).

I coil the curl with my fingertips. He is just now

13. He no longer woos me.

His impertinence startles him

and I stow his brief attentiveness like a

Krugerrand, fatuously, into my pocket.

Soon his voice, too, will be hijacked by the gods

and devils of arduous hormones. For now,

a wanton partition.