My father leads me to the mountain he
Carries my mother’s ashes in a pouch
Me on his back up cliffs we crouch
Beneath a heavy rock like frightened lizards be
-tween it the heavy rock and the cold dirt
It’s not a tunnel but it’s like a low
-er sky and shuffle as we go
Wading through human bones I’m sick and hurt
Him by being sick I years ago I was
And so to him I’m always sick the rock
Might fall and all the dry bones break
And puff away blood traps the clouds in us
Note: “Blank Verse Sonnet Concluded by a Pure Rhyme and an Impure Rhyme” and “Elizabethan Sonnet on Violating the Flag Code” were first published in Berlin Lit