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Confederate Flag, I-240

Eric Tran
is flown half-mast. I want
to write about the suffocating
 
enormity, but against
the sky’s slick skin, it dangles
 
like a tired bandage.
I don’t want to forgive
 
so easily. I want
to play the angry faggot
 
but in truth I burn
to know what grief
 
demotes your pride,
neighbor. Did you lose
 
your son, a lover,
a dog? Does it matter
 
that when my best friend died,
one of the last things he said was
 
be nice to me,
I don’t feel well.

 
I mean to say we’re all
so small. I’m scared

for all of us
to run out of gas                    

in an unfamiliar place.
You know the feeling,

coasting that road

so slowly, hoping
you’ll make it home.
Picture
Eric Tran is the author The Gutter Spread Guide to Prayer and the chapbook Revisions. He won the 2019 Autumn House Press Emerging Writer’s contest work appears in RHINO, 32 Poems, Missouri Review, Iowa Review, and elsewhere. He is a resident physician in psychiatry in Asheville, NC.


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