membership

by Adam Deutsch

In the barn, two green-bodied black-winged 

bugs are joined at their backs, crawl rims 

of surfaces nobody can honestly claim as their own. 

The farm’s main house’s wallpaper

is stubborn, pushing back at the steam iron, 

glues and old centuries’ ink enduring 

like a domestic tattoo, a fabric that moths 

and moisture ignore. It can get into your limbs

before you scrape it away from the original wall. 

When I rub palms together, small strands

of tarnished ribbon unravel to cellar dust, 

a box of papers, my aunt tells me, that say 

she’s recognized as a daughter of a revolution,

could be of confederacy, and I could be a son.  

It’s something like thirty dollars to register, 

another five to insert yourself in the record

of who was where in histories that topple 

toward myth. A ship’s belly who could not find 

the sun in the flag-soaked ocean, carrying

our organization of murder to shore. 

Adam Deutsch is the author of a full-length collection, Every Transmission, forthcoming from Fernwood Press in 2023. He has work recently in Poetry International, Thrush, Juked, AMP Magazine, Ping Pong, and Typo, and has a chapbook called Carry On (Elegies). He teaches in the English Department at Grossmont College and is the publisher of Cooper Dillon Books. He lives with his spouse and child in San Diego, CA. AdamDeutsch.com