My Father

Poem of the week

By cc1959

Sun, 10 Jan 2010
  • 1731 reads
3 comments
 

My father had a clock that used to speak
A brush that painted foam upon his chin
A pipe that smoked whisky breath on a Friday
A dog that watched and lived a long, long time
And one that whined and always let him down.

He gutted rabbits at the kitchen step
Their glistening entrails slid into a bucket.
He hung their empty bodies on the fence
Twitching warm and soft and bloody
Blue flies stayed and talked
Well into dusk.

He worked the lungs of an accordion
Elbows flapping and fingers at the stops
He dandled it and bent his ear to listen.
He sold it
When something in the music
Made my little sister cry.

Certificate PG
Poem
ABC set 1
Autobiography

Comments

Submitted by bobblehat2023 on
Agree this is a very good. A few things: "A dog that watched and lived a long, long time And one that whined and always let him down." It's a bit clunky having "A brush", "A pipe" and "A dog" and then describing a second dog as one. It's worth considering having either "One dog" in line 4 or "And another one" in Line 5. Not sure about how well "Twitching warm and soft and bloody" works rhythmically. It reads like there's a two syllable word missing. Also not sure about talking "Well into dusk" Talking well into to morning or afternoon is fine but not sure it makes sense with dusk because dusk is (or seems like) a fixed point. Third verse seems quite different rhythmically from the first two. Generally, though, I think is one of the best poems I've seen on Abctales for ages.

 

Submitted by tcook on
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Submitted by threeleafshamrock on
Been away for a couple of days and came across this on Twitter...so glad that I did. Beautiful, haunting, clever and just about perfect. Ticks all the boxes and is one to come back to, more than once. This really is a class act, well done. Chris ;)