In Memory of Tony Fonce

I was thinking of the world
and the men that leave their mark on it—
the way they live their lives. Fathers
like Gods to their children, their loved ones.
Be a sorry man and it’s your loss; be a
great man and soon face great death like a great man,
early, with your children together, mourning,
and your heart quiet, but strong. The sorry man,
the little man, is a garden of maybe and somehow—

no, that’s not you.

Don’t turn out like that, Dominic. Please take
care to be just like your father.

 

Source: Dozens of sympathy cards my family received after my father’s death.

Method: My father died two years ago and, one day, I realized that the couple hundred sympathy cards my family received, which sat  in a wicker basket in my living room, could hold valuable words and phrases for found poems. Not only did I use phrases on the cards themselves, but the words of the friends and family members wrote within the cards. Essentially, I created a word bank of the language within the cards to mix and match to create these poems.

Dom Fonce is an undergraduate English major at Youngstown State University. He has had either work published in or forthcoming in issues of 3Elements Review, West Texas Literary Review, the Magnolia Review, Obra/Artifact, UMU Calliope, and others.