Three Poems
by Cameron Morse
Poetry
Lacan at the SSA
Waiting to be seen, I cannot say
I know my name: this, Lacan calls the mirror
stage. Imaginary, I have not yet
entered through the door, not yet drawn a number
from the machine. The security guard has not
questioned me: What brings you in today?
What, indeed, has brought me here? I lie awake
worrying about line breaks and workshops.
At the plexiglass, I fumble bank statements, my spouse’s
paystubs, whisper under the sill, still no employment,
no assets, no weapons of any kind. Unable to recall my Mother’s
maiden name, I exit, disvalued,
undesired, driven by—my Mother,
Anger—the binder bulging with uncalled-for documents,
medical reports, poems.
Phaedo
My dog mouths the tennis ball like a syllable
in black gums, the first syllable
of a poem I am writing about playing catch
with my dog, Phaedo.
Leaf mulch and hay catch in his winter coat.
I snatch the ball out of his mouth
and fling its smudged neon
nap into the sunlight. Phaedo belongs to me
the way we belong to the gods, says Socrates.
Men are possessions, our bodies a kind of prison,
a chain-link fence, and the gods mind
the gates. The gods mind me, my tennis ball
leaping in the faded grass. I know my life
does not belong to me. I know I must chase down
the days of my life and ever so reluctantly
lay them at my master’s feet.
Pythagorean Theorem
Light falls from square windows in the eastern door,
emblazoning parallelograms on the carpet
in the study where I write. Late morning.
It’s always an attempt to see myself in the form of another,
to see the vehicle in the tenor. Doing Algebra 1/2
with my little brother, I relearn Pythagoras:
To find the area of a parallelogram, slice it diagonally
into two triangles. Picture a mountain
mirroring itself in the surface of an alpine lake: Bear Lake,
Emerald or Nymph. To rehearse
for the transmigration of souls, release the lights
from the frames that form them. Open the door to your study.
About the Author
Cameron Morse lives with his wife Lili and son Theodore in Blue Springs, Missouri. He was diagnosed with a glioblastoma in 2014. With a 14.6 month life expectancy, he entered the Creative Writing program at the University of Missouri—Kansas City and, in 2018, graduated with an M.F.A. His poems have been published in over 100 different magazines, including New Letters, Bridge Eight, and South Dakota Review. His first collection, Fall Risk, won Glass Lyre Press’s 2018 Best Book Award. His second, Father Me Again, is available from Spartan Press.