The Ethics of the Third Person
- The Ethics of the Third Person
poetry, playground, children, fathers, lovers
I am the man in the play-ground, the cord of his earbuds
clenched in his teeth(bit in a horse's mouth)
so the mic's closer to hisvoice, so his lover
can hear him above the end-less screams. His daughter
(my daughter!)plays behind him, wild now on
the monkey bars. Every-thing is as it should
be. In a week he will travel toFlorida & his lover will meet him
there. Shehas heard his daughter grow
up—two, three, four—
& she will even end up watchingher, when it turns out he has
no childcare in Florida—the two of them will build sandcastles
& collect shells while he works &
that night his daughter will give hima drawing, all of them—wife,
lover, daughter, him. [End Page 37]
Nick Flynn has worked as a ship's captain, an electrician, and as a case-worker with homeless adults. The poem herein is from his forthcoming book, I Will Destroy You (Graywolf, 2019). His work has been translated into fifteen languages.
