El Maguey

A little boy I bury my face

in the pillow after Mom confronts me

in the corridor with a newspaper

clipping of woman in brassiere she discovers

in my jeans. Ashamed as if for the first

time and for all time thereafter,

I will never live it down. I drown

myself in shame. Smother my mouth.

Now she and Mariah accuse my 17-year-old

brother of peeking through his fingers

and make him leave the family room

during an episode of Endeavour. I overhear

his older sister say it’s just better

if you use a pillow. Some time after my nightmare

in the bedroom, Dad over tacos at El Maguey

states enigmatically that thinking leads

to doing and leaves it at that.

He’s long left the family.

Cameron Morse was diagnosed with a glioblastoma in 2014. With a 14.6 month life expectancy, he entered the Creative Writing Program at the University of Missouri--Kansas City and, in 2018, graduated with an M.F.A. His poems have been published in numerous magazines, including New Letters, Bridge Eight, Portland Review and South Dakota Review. His first poetry collection, Fall Risk, won Glass Lyre Press's 2018 Best Book Award. His three subsequent collections are Father Me Again (Spartan Press, 2018), Coming Home with Cancer (Blue Lyra Press, 2019), and Terminal Destination (Spartan Press, 2019). He lives with his pregnant wife Lili and son Theodore in Blue Springs, Missouri, where he manages Inklings' FOURTH FRIDAYS READING SERIES with Eve Brackenbury and serves as poetry editor for Harbor Review. For more information, check out his Facebook page or website.