Poetry by Scott Dalgarno
I’m sure you’d have been a pistol.
You’d be eleven now, just beginning
to tell me you hate me. So bummed,
I never got to bounce you
on my knee.
I was already heels-over-head in love
with you
like you might have been
had you lived. We could have been
two shirts on one hanger.
Finally my life was NOT defined
by all my worst –moments—
throwing up on that ferris wheel,
telling your mother how beautiful
her sister was.
I’m such a failure. I mean,
even a lawn sprinkler
can make a rainbow.
Walking my despair
around the block here
the goddamn neighborhood
looks like hell: tipped garbage
bins, broken strollers, used condoms.
Your not being here
is everywhere.
Scott Dalgarno counts himself fortunate to have seen his poems in APR, The Yale Review, The Antioch Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Pilgrimage Magazine, America, Cagibi, and The Oregonian. His poem “Small Pleasures” placed second in the 2024 Oregon Poetry Association Prose Poem contest. His volume, Third-Class Relics, was a finalist for the 2024 Sally Albiso Poetry Book Award and will be published by MoonPath Press in 2025. He lives among firs and dogwoods near Portland, Oregon, where he works for the resistance.