My question asking if you are OK
in full knowledge that yes may well mean no—
monosyllables build the barricade
perimeter beyond which we can’t go
into the sanctum where you admit fright,
a precious hell guarded from special op
humanitarian fact-finding flights—
must voice loving concern. And then must stop
to wait on answers truly indirect,
accept teenager-brokered terms of love
are spoken in non-sequiturs and gaps,
a small concession I did not expect
enough to give stalled confidence a shove,
to tell us that you are OK perhaps.

*****

RUOK? was first published in Shot Glass Journal #43 in the International Poets section.

James Lucas’ bio:
“I was born in Sydney in 1965, and educated at the University of New South Wales, where I won the University Medal, and then at Cambridge, where I completed a Ph D in modernist poetry in 1997.
I published two chapbooks in the UK in the 1990s, and my first Australian publication was in Southerly in 1994. Since then my poems have appeared in Communion, Contrappasso, Cordite Poetry Review, Heat, Island, Meanjin, New England Poetry Review, Overland, Quadrant, Salt, Scarp, Southerly, the Henry Kendall Award Anthology, and the 2020 Newcastle Poetry Prize Anthology.
My first collection, Rare Bird, was published by Recent Work Press in March 2021, reviewed in ABR in August 2021, and Commended in the 2021 Anne Elder Award.
I read as widely as I can in contemporary and older poetry. For many years I have taught English at Sydney Grammar School.”

Photo: “RUOK” by arievergreen is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.