Sonnet for Jack Spicer

Your head looks like a half-eaten bowl
Of chili, warm and soothing to eat.
How it must feel to be picked apart
By a life that left you for dead.

Your nudity may be a hymn
Should the rhinestones and geese
Get their act together. Dead or not
There’s little left. Our kitchen is a carnival
Of tinsel and remorse.

What were you fighting, all those years?
I’ve been fighting too. But I was quiet and unborn
And you didn’t know, how could you?
I may be a bastard, and you may be dead,
But I’m all yours.

Sam Kerbel was shortlisted for the 2024 Oxford Poetry Prize. His first chapbook Can’t Beat the Price (2025) is available from Bottlecap Press. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming from Anthropocene, Apocalypse Confidential, Don’t Submit, Lana Turner, Pamenar, and South Florida Poetry Journal, among other publications.