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Tom Bourguignon is a poet and essayist and earns a living as a paralegal.  He lives in Missoula, Montana, with his wife and their baby boy Felix and their two cats.





 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tom Bourguignon

 

So I’m sitting here, cold, all out of ideas on the sonnet
that I’m working on.  My kittens see my dilemma, Sancho
curls up to me, allows me to rub the belly, then Gigi
begins to play hunt-the-feathered-thing, so I make the red-
feathered thing dance in front of her, and she plays.
                                                                              Play.  That’s
what I need.  Thank you, Sancho, Gigi.  Lighten up, Bourguignon,
you fucker, life’s not serious, it’s not important to write pretentious
father-sonnets that seem to claim I had a hard childhood.
He was never a bad father, he’s awesome, my kittens
should be so lucky—so why am I trying to shoehorn
Spanish Inquisition allusions into my poems
about him?  We’re all gonna die someday, Trinity
Church is gonna burn down again,
                                                   we might as well just play. 
Let the poem be the red-feathered thing—

 

So I'm sitting here cold....