As an exercise in my poetry class at Endicott College I asked students to create a fictional Dad modeled after Sylvia Plath’s caustic but brilliant poem Daddy.  My student Kyle Giroux came up with this one.

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Dad

He sits in a chair on the front porch
Stinking of gin and
tobacco
Plumes of smoke swirling from under
His grey and grizzled mustache
“Son,” he says
“What would you rather do with your life?”
I shrug and say nothing
Just watch as he sips his gin and lemon
A small belch emits a single ring of smoke
As he fixes his
baseball cap
I shrug and say nothing again
Spitting silence
Then, “What’s that book in your hand?”
“Edgar Allan Poe,” I say
“Yeah? You like him?”
Smoke swirls blue to the moon,
Gin fumes reek of pine trees
I shrug as I watch them dance
“Yeah,” I say.
Silence is as comfortable
as silence can be.

– Kyle Giroux

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