Poetry By Sam Rasnake

Nicholas_T CC



Photograph, 1942

             – for my Father


His frail body, the marrow being eaten
away, in a bed he’ll never leave, longs
for oblivion and a silence from pain – 
and its unbearable bursts. Mostly, 

his eyes are closed, and he can’t, though
he tries to still the jerking, focus on a
voice, a touch, a face – they all fall aside. 
My head fills with Turritopsis dohrnii,

the jellyfish that never dies, the one when
starved or wounded or sick can change, 
can return to the polyp stage, finding its 
young world over and over. But I see my 

father at 10, his porch in South Clinchfield 
winter, bibbed overalls and coat – the eyes, 
the hair, the hands all childhood and escape
for some unknown beyond the steep ridge – 

with an ache for summer but making do with
the cold – nothing but shadows of dread and
will on his face, a determined look that could 
imagine the bitter darkness of this moment.





Sam Rasnake has published work in Wigleaf, Pithead Chapel, The Drunken Boat, Best of the Net, Southern Poetry Anthology, MiPOesias Companion, Bending Genres Anthology, A Cluster of Lights, has served as a judge for the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize, University of California, Berkeley, and was the editor of Blue Fifth Review from 2000-2018. He’s the author of Cinéma Vérité (A-Minor Press) and World within the World (Cyberwit). Follow Sam on Bluesky @samrasnake.bsky.social or Twitter @SamRasnake.