Poetry By Winter R. Parker

Igor Spasic CC




Boy Tethered
After David Hilliard’s Boys Tethered (2008) 
 
boy
awkward; boy always
contemplating; boy broken
like dogs in houses, kept
inside, trained by suppression. 
 
boy remembering; boy
erasing, being erased; boy
looking at a lifeline as if
it’s a leash, forgetting the sea. 
 
boy
liminal; boy threshold 
blue and gray and stellar 
in bitter beauty; boy
highlighted—how pretty how he
sinks into himself.
 
boy captured; boy
alone in a frame ignoring the land 
he could conquer; boy 
 
waiting for boy to pull the rope
wondering if he’ll be strong enough
knowing he can’t swim.
 
this boy, this blue-gray I can’t inhabit
can never be mine, not any more 
mine than the water. 
 
his reflections self-effacing 
at first true touch—splattering.

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Winter R. Parker (she/they) is a transfeminine poet, Australian Shepherd owner, future professor, and MA.Ed in Instructional Technology candidate. She has worked with Zone 3, Palette Poetry, and The Los Angeles Review. Her writing has benefitted from and received numerous grants and scholarships, and she has participated in workshops led by renowned writers. Winter is revising a chapbook that began as her undergrad honors thesis, and she has work forthcoming in Red Mud Review.
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