27
I want to be this photograph
from 1975 with its Polaroid
yellow and greens. A picture
taken on a wooden deck outside
a Missouri farmhouse.
I want to be the photo’s subject,
shirtless and smiling, rough around
the edges like a scratched plastic frame
Levi jeans, and thick hair, cut muscles
from a railroad tie gang. To be
like my father with his mustache
and beard; I want too much, it seems.
I can’t find any good in the pictures
I have of me.
Hard to believe I wrote this five years ago.
