I Have Begun to Enrich My Own Uranium

I.

mornings I wake up thinking
there will come a day, when

I wake and forget my father’s
recent death

that redundancy will set in
and my friends will have tired of my grief

or, in the case of this death
my lack thereof

yesterday, Denver said I’m putting too much
pressure on the monkey that handles that

specific crank box
I said that the new war caused me more

strife than my own bad news
he was honest, when

he explained that the perforations
—when they come— are worse

there was a war correspondent
walking along a stretch of mangled

Russian machinery who caught my attention
when he pointed out the latent

grenades, scattered about a stretch
of Ukrainian highway;

we’ll do anything to keep the dead alive
it was yesterday when the fog of neglect

like red moss, began to form behind my
rib cage

when I began to fear its proximity
the East River ran cold

and March was roaring
so we made a hard turn

and he explained
the ingenuity of elderberries

when they go dormant
in flood zones

II.

folks, when they ask how he went
are really wondering how it’s gonna go down

so now I make shit up:
when my brothers snuck Dad

past his intentions
he smuggled

a pearl handled revolver
into the ICU

and blew his brains out
before he had to start drinking steak

through a straw
he wished upon a star

and faded into the constellations
of his tacky pajamas

people will do anything to resurrect a sham
when my friend said that thing

about the monkey and his crank box
I failed to mention that he’s been

diligent
it’s nauseating that one man

can slaughter a thousand
for the price of a saddle

when I’m out in the yard
chopping wood

it’s a lobotomy
I don’t want to start a war

because my hairline is receding
there are slivers of the patriarchy

I hold close/
study in my shelter, for fear they haven’t

corroded;
when the old man lost the hardware store

he blamed the Carter Administration
but he didn’t dismount a pony

pull out his saber
and, for shame, behead a generation

to his credit, he added a decade to his bar tab
quit that

and starting coaching
junior varsity basketball

Terence Degnan has published two full-length books of poetry. His newest collection I Can Wonder Anything (Finishing Line, 2023) is forthcoming. He is a co-director at the Camperdown Organization which was created to increase access to publication and education as well as promote agency for underrepresented writers.