“where the good sod dies” by Lance Milham

my father spoke from a grin
behind a muffincrumb beard
about his backswing and traffic lights
and whatever-whoever-said-to-who-cares
while I peeled grains of sleep from my eyes,
but then I noticed a freckle
a thumbwidth above his ear
that his hair used to hide:
a tight brown circle
like the eighteenth green,
of an abandoned course,
the sod withering silently, defeated,
like the rest of the golfer must be

—
Lance Milham is an MFA candidate at the University of Central Florida. His fiction and poetry has appeared in Soft Cartel, Pinkley Press, Aurore, and the late Anti-Heroin Chic.