A fake wedding
in the porno
my babysitters
brought home,
bought into, claimed
to have found
on their front porch,
innocent mistake,
a stork’s error.
Rice thrown
at a couple
leaving a church.
Repetitive
respective shots.
Disrespectful.
Worse than Baywatch,
or Disney—turn
the volume up, freeze
the frame, explain
a cartoon priest’s
erection—or real babies.
Not worship,
but embarrassed looks
on boy-ish
faces; young sheep
dogs. No threats
or intimated mysteries
of retaliations.
I was old enough
not to tell.
They could trust me.
—
Joshua Gottlieb-Miller’s writing appears in Brooklyn Rail, miCRo, Pithead Chapel, Concision Poetry Journal, Berru Poetry Series, ANMLY, and elsewhere. Previously he was a Tent Fellow in Creative Writing at the Yiddish Book Center. Currently he teaches at San Jacinto College, and lives in Houston with his wife and son. His debut collection, “The Art of Bagging,” won Conduit’s Marystina Santiestevan First Book Prize, and is forthcoming.
Photography by: Hennie Stander
