Breeding For Truth Poem by Edward Coletti

Breeding For Truth

When as in a science fiction movie
or in a Wallace Stevens poem
hell that all-defining inferno could
be extinguished and children might be
more apt to recognize their parents
as the frauds we all become when we sire
posing as thoroughbreds while no more
than the nags the word parenthood demands
we preen prance and perform our dressage
poorly transparently and our words
our advice to them rumbles from
within an empty hogshead of sour sherry
useless undrunk without any utility at all
except the confidence that children also
become parents and fail in each
particular the same way an odds-on
favorite stumbles falls and is shot.