DUNES REVIEW
Fall 2017 (Volume 21, Issue I)
REBECCA OET
ENDGAME TACTICS
I grabbed my father
from a city of fathers,
snatched
his cow-leather hands.
There’s a skeleton face sticker,
winking at me from the ceiling.
Between the curtains the
air is smudged.
His head is hazard and light,
looking up at the turquoise moon.
Have I prisoned him in layers of chessboards?
Pawns are flying, the rooks have vanished,
and it seems the queen has
lost her crown.
Tiptoeing into a haze
of limping eyelids,
have I condemned him?