The Letters I Won'T Write Poem by Ali Alizadeh

The letters I won't write
murmur most inaudibly

through the signs
of something like this

sometimes find the cracks
to transmit their noise. I've

no intention to write
to my father (about it all) but

it's a parallel epistle
fear and disappointment

inscribed in between
lines of a poem, say, or lines

spoken by a novel's hero
who (of course) has nothing

to do with a father. Cunning
and assiduous as I am

I can't always trap
the unknowable facts

in a cage constructed
of calculated artifice. Sooner

or later, hellish growls
of past hurts vibrate

the basis of an elaborate
indirect simulation. Not

formal constrictors - 'Dear...'
to 'Yours...' - but the gist

of an absolute, undocumented
list of accusations

that only insinuates
and never truly represents

the letters I can't write.