R.T. Castleberry
ALLEGIANCE
I remember my father dying--
cancer he swore was a muscle pull,
treating it with a hot pack from the year before.
He finally disappeared into the VA,
never to return.
I loved him. I never visited.
Sickly as a child,
hospitals were needles and pain to me.
At the service, I repeated
sardonic words he’d dropped
over a friend’s casket.
I’ve worn that separation since,
like the signet ring, the bomber jacket
he bequeathed.
RT Castleberry's work has appeared in Roanoke Review, Santa Fe Literary Review, Pedestal Magazine, Green Mountains Review, The Alembic and Comstock Review. Internationally, it has been published in Canada, Wales, Ireland, Scotland, New Zealand and Antarctica. I’ve had poetry in the anthologies: Travois-An Anthology of Texas Poetry, TimeSlice, The Weight of Addition, Anthem: A Tribute to Leonard Cohen, Kind Of A Hurricane: Without Words and Blue Milk’s anthology, Dawn. My chapbook, Arriving At The Riverside, was published by Finishing Line Press in January, 2010. An e-book, Dialogue and Appetite, was published by Right Hand Pointing in May, 2011.