Come out to hear George David Clark read at Fergie’s Pub in Philadelphia at the newly revived E-Verse Equinox Reading Series on March 11th. Click here for more information.

Give me
your gall. Give me
an ugly name,

the fabric
body of a tragic
doll,

yarn-haired,
bug-eyed, plain.
I’ll take the blame.

I’ll think the thoughts
you shouldn’t
claim, the bald

abuse and aimless
libel—
I’m the cloth

and Lysol
used to disinfect
a brain.

Give me
your stains and sweat,
your small wet cough

against my neck,
your spit,
your kiss’s mange.

I’ll peck you back:
my lips
as soft as light

against your jaw
while you’re asleep.
I’ll bare

my teeth,
but barely. Where
a parasite

might gnaw,
might thieve, I only
want my share

of why
you’re lonely, Father,
God. My bite

is fair. Give me
the grief
to which I’m heir.

Original appearance in Ninth Letter.

George David Clark’s Reveille (Arkansas) received the 2015 Miller Williams Prize and his recent poems can be found in AGNI, The Georgia Review, The Gettysburg Review, Ecotone, The Southern Review, and elsewhere. The editor of 32 Poems, he teaches creative writing at Washington & Jefferson College and lives in western Pennsylvania with his wife and their four young children.