Christopher Ankney: [My wife needed a second child and I did not.]

Poetry by Christopher Ankney
[MY WIFE NEEDED A SECOND CHILD AND I DID NOT.]

My wife needed a second child and I did not.
It did not stop my wanting to please her
and it did not stop me from the years of wanting
our monthly disappointment to end: wearing,
the awkward bar jokes about an abundance of sex
as consolation. Have you ever had the large bucket
of fries from the Ocean City pier? Hand-cut,
salted frivolity, the crisp skin and grease
that keeps you walking the planks and staring
into little seasonal shops and deciding if
you need to buy a shirt that says you’ve been here
instead of the city a little farther north in Delaware
or the city a little south of the ponies. Sex on a beach,
I imagine, would satisfy less than this bucket of fries,
or the same—both leave you to chastise yourself
in the moment for building up the need
to keep going until the bucket is empty, the bottom
a greasy Rorschach.

Christopher Ankney’s debut, Hearsay (WWPH), won the Jean Feldman Prize and was a post-publication finalist for the 2015 Ohioana Book Award for Poetry. His manuscript Dear Irreverence, was a finalist for the 2026 Brittingham & Felix Pollak Prizes at University of Wisconsin Press. His poems have appeared in Boston Review, Electric Literature’s The Commuter, Gulf Coast, Hunger Mountain, Pleaides, and dozens more. He is a Professor of English at College of Southern Maryland. He lives in Annapolis, Maryland, with his wife and two sons. His author website: www.christopherankney.com.