Description
Poetry by Kent Leatham
If you could say anything to a parent you'd never met, where would you start? How about "Dear Dad..."
Modern Man offers an initmate outreach to Kent Leatham's anonymous sperm-donor father: a ghost whose absence represents the best and worst of contemporary masculinity. Combining wry humor and raw grief, and with references ranging from Reddit and Rob Zombie to Shakespeare's sonnets and the Song of Songs, these poems deconstruct toxic gender tropes while lamenting the traumas inflicted on those expected to "take it like a man." As Leatham's unknowable father is asked:
I wonder what you would most have wished
for me to learn that you still hold as self-evident
if when I was a dependent
little pink American boy
you'd been there?
Kent Leatham is a pet, translator, public educator, proud member of the LGBTQIA+ family, and the child of an anonymous sperm donor. Kent's work has appeared in journals and anthologies aroudn the world, including multiple appearances in Best New Poets. Kent lives on California's Central Coast.
