Doing CPR on Some Dude Who Looks Just Like My Father

Ibe Liebenberg

And he has been dead so many yearsI barely recognize himBut for him     I could fake that heartInto beating    a few more timesOf compressionsI’d breathe for himPress my lips into hisEven though it is against protocolRibs give under weight     I fall throughThirty one shitty     Thirty two beautifulReunited minutes     I lose countIn the chaos of the bodyI barely knew him anyway     In the ambulance     My hands consentTo skin becoming coldArms practice pushing away     At the hospital     They cannot separate usSo I apologize for the violenceOf not letting go

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Headshot of Ibe Liebenberg

Ibe Liebenberg is a citizen of the Chickasaw Nation. He lives in Chico, California and works as a firefighter, and a lecturer at Chico State University. He is a recent graduate of the MFA program at the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) in both poetry and fiction. He has been published in POETRY Magazine, The ThreePenny Review, Ecotone, North American Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Sugar House Review, American Journal of Poetry, and Salamander Magazine. Finalist of the James Welch Poetry contest. Winner of the Tribal College Journals Creative writing contest in both fiction and poetry. Winner of the Sowell Emerging Writers Prize for his poetry collection Birds at Night.

Cover of the Threepenny Review Fall 2024

The Threepenny Review

Fall 2024

Berkeley, California

Editor and Publisher
Wendy Lesser

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