↓

English Bar Mitzvah

A paid event. Nothing
to recite, cant or toast.
Dancing not for me,
speeches not for me.
My childhood only left me
when I saw the shame

in all translation:
a moonless night,
you interpreting Rilke,
for me, German-to-
English, the English
often the direct
opposite in meaning
from the original.

I promise to stay
in Montréal
and love you,
to listen
to your nasal
German forever.
I promise, tomorrow,
moon or no moon,
my love will be
naked, lawful,
held as song
for dancing,
for angels
or otherwise.

back to issue

Sean Meggeson lives in Toronto, Canada. He works as a psychoanalytic psychotherapist. He has written and lectured on such topics as Lacan & James Joyce, neurodiversity, and alternative rock music. Sean recently has had poems published in In Parentheses, Psychoanalytic Perspectives, Stink Eye Magazine, and SCAB magazine.