Chase Dimock
Goofus
Gallant never knew
after I was done
taking the last piece of chocolate cake,
refusing to share my plastic army men,
mocking the teacher behind her back,
that I’d peek over into his panel
and watch him
share his candy with the other children,
help the teacher erase the blackboard,
scrape the lesions off lepers,
turn water into Hawaiian Punch.
It’s so easy to be good
when your 1950s frilly aproned mother
always sits in the kitchen ready with a glass
of skim milk, when you have a dad,
always offering life lessons while building
a ship in a bottle, when your cowlick
forms from so many adoring hands playfully
tousling your hair and not because
you sleep every night
on a pile of dirty laundry.
Maybe I play with matches
because that’s all Daddy left me.
Eating cookies in the afternoon
can’t spoil your dinner if that’s
the only food Mom left in the cupboard.
Maybe I ride helmet-less into traffic
feet propped on the handle bars
because there’s freedom in knowing
it’s only reckless if you have something to lose.
Gallant never knew
after I was done
taking the last piece of chocolate cake,
refusing to share my plastic army men,
mocking the teacher behind her back,
that I’d peek over into his panel
and watch him
share his candy with the other children,
help the teacher erase the blackboard,
scrape the lesions off lepers,
turn water into Hawaiian Punch.
It’s so easy to be good
when your 1950s frilly aproned mother
always sits in the kitchen ready with a glass
of skim milk, when you have a dad,
always offering life lessons while building
a ship in a bottle, when your cowlick
forms from so many adoring hands playfully
tousling your hair and not because
you sleep every night
on a pile of dirty laundry.
Maybe I play with matches
because that’s all Daddy left me.
Eating cookies in the afternoon
can’t spoil your dinner if that’s
the only food Mom left in the cupboard.
Maybe I ride helmet-less into traffic
feet propped on the handle bars
because there’s freedom in knowing
it’s only reckless if you have something to lose.
Chase Dimock lives in Los Angeles and serves as the Managing Editor of As It Ought To Be Magazine. His debut book of poetry, Sentinel Species, was published in 2020 by Stubborn Mule Press. His poems have been published in Waccamaw, Rappahannock Review, Faultline, Roanoke Review, and Flyway among others. He holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Illinois and his scholarship in World Literature and LGBT Studies has appeared in College Literature, Modern American Poetry, The Lambda Literary Review, and several edited anthologies.