Poetry: Selections from Samuel Strathman

Homesick

 

I wish I wasn’t at work

but I am,

nose running, lips trembling

 

with the updraft.

Shadows and snow freeze me

in place.

 

Perhaps I’m contemplating

a dark truth.

Stuck here, missing home,

 

an old family portrait to reflect back on.

I do, however, carry the scent

of home on my body.

 

I just can’t smell it,

a blessing and curse.

I yearn for what I already have

 

yet I spend a fraction

of my waking hours in the place

that ground me, homesick.

 

Is more peace and quiet a cure

for the ill will I feel

toward this lonely planet?

 

Monotony has me in the depths

of its madness…

Something’s got to give.

This Child

 

This child

will go to school,

start conversations with jokes

that will fall short

of other children’s jokes,

a pariah in the eyes of his peers.

 

This child

will be taught by teachers

who lose their patience

when they ask the obvious questions,

chastised from the get-go.

 

This child

will become an adolescent

who cannot work

alongside their classmates.

They’ll be sent

to the principal’s office regularly

because the cycle repeats itself.

 

This adolescent

will be sent to therapists

and guidance counsellors

who cannot guide them.

They will have trouble

focusing during tests, homework.

They’ll lag behind

but keep pushing through.

 

This adolescent will grow

into a tormented youth,

keeping to themselves

unless they are forced

to engage with others,

torturers in the eyes

of the tortured.

 

This youth will grow

to be an adult who lives alone,

and works alone.

They will live by the rules

while the people at the top

continue their oppressions.

The never-ending cycle

never misses a step.

 

This adult won’t settle down

or have children.

They’ve seen what happens

when someone is born different.

Observe & Report

 

My most common pose

before a shift was stupor,

stewing in the kitchen,

a small fish in a shark tank.

 

The first half of the day

always felt like I wasn’t

in the driver’s seat:

haunted by how the biggest indicator

 

for committing suicide

(other than having a plan)

is if it runs in the family.

One uncle overdosed on the painkillers

 

they’d been chewing on

like breath mints for years.

A distant cousin took a similar route,

hung himself in his bathroom.

 

Who knew what lay ahead?

The harbingers in my nightmares

were insignias of fire.

In my mind, I was lower than the floormat

 

of failure, observe, report, repeat –

repeating the cycle until the wheel

of life landed on fate’s rainbow:

my feet have yet to touch the 

ground

Samuel Strathman (he/him) is a poet, visual artist, and kitchen coordinator. Some of his poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Prole, Bullshit Lit Mag, Voice Lux Journal and other publications. He is the author of three chapbooks including In Flocks of Three to Five (Anstruther Press) and The Incubus (Roaring Junior Press). His debut poetry collection, Omnishambles is forthcoming with Ice Floe Press (2022). He is currently living on the traditional land of the Anishnaabeg people.