The Step-Daughter Poem by Lamont Palmer

THE STEP-DAUGHTER

The E-cigarettes you love lose
their imitative skill
and go limp in the face

of urges. You go with them
into a nothingness of
several years of this facade,

knocking on doors of torture.
What of the wringing hands?
What of all the symptoms

unnamed, unwanted, unheralded?
The neighbors hate your dogs.
Particularly Blue, the loud one,

who barks like worlds are ending.
Frazzled hours pile up.
Limitations lurk like uneven lawns.

Back to the terror of
reflection; the clubs, the karaoke
pummeling attempts at logic,

not quite erasing the boredom.
Your father was not the one you
wanted; neither father would behave

the way you desired. Things devolve
before you can process them;
atoms have their own agendas.

The world will not kowtow to you.
There is so little to do
but weep into the stolid air.