YOU LOOK JUST LIKE THE BASTARD

My daddy, all honey & heartthrob, smooth 
rain slid slick down panes of glass. My daddy 
bladed shade, all wicked glint & stride. My daddy 

pleads & weathers. My daddy a rage of absence, air 
viscous, all cuss words & steel. My daddy myth 
& muster. My daddy Mister Silence. My daddy missed 

suppers. My daddy’s silos & silos of loss. My daddy real. 
All moonscape & scar. My daddy’s freckled badness. 
His saccharine bass. So, my strawberry nose. 

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Tariq Thompson (@tariqjthompson) is a poet and educator from Memphis, Tennessee. He is the author of the chapbook LONE LILY (Sunset Press, 2021). His poetry has appeared in The American Poetry Review, The Adroit Journal, Sixth Finch, and elsewhere. Thompson was a finalist for a 2023 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship and was awarded the 2020 Adroit Prize for Poetry. He holds an MFA in poetry from New York University, where he was a Writers in the Public Schools Fellow. You can find more of his work at tariqthompson.com.