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    Seize
    Seize
    Seize
    Ebook130 pages1 hour

    Seize

    By Brian Komei Dempster

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Seize, Brian Komei Dempster’s follow-up to Topaz, spares no one the highs and lows of fatherhood. The speaker struggles to care for his young and ailing child — a child whose many medical problems create an obstacle course of moral and emotional dilemmas. How does a father come to terms with the large and unknowable mysteries of a child who cannot communicate in a “normative” way? How does a parent — especially one who is dependent on language — guide a child without the use of speech? And how does one become the parent of another when their own uncertainties, their own wounds — intergenerationally from war, from strained race relations, from constantly being denied a place to belong — are still healing?
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherFour Way Books
    Release dateOct 22, 2020
    ISBN9781945588907
    Seize

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      Book preview

      Seize - Brian Komei Dempster

      Seize

      Blue flame

                                    in the eye’s corner,

      stove on

                     high, we brace

                                    for his flint

                     and spark, our dark

      surprise, his smile

                                    jolts, head

                     unleashed, little body

                                                  arched, straining

                                    in the high

      chair, we stand

                                  to face

                     anything, she steadies

                                    his tray, eggs bubble

                     in the pot, I lunge

                                    for his spoon, his purple

      elephant, water boils

                                    over sides, we look

                     to each other, sense

      the sizzle, his bowl

                     clattering, a reverse

                                                  crater, we shake off

                                    faults, shells

                     crack, window

      shut, we smell

                                    the heat, hardened

                                                  yolks, his brain’s singed

                     gray, the scorched

      black dome,

                  we are all

                                 hollowed out.

      A Boy

      We knocked Jake Brown

      to the ground

      in eighth grade, kept him there

      with words, Get up, retard. A

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