John McKernan




My Father Smiled

 

 

That snowy

December day

 

As he reached over

And scrunched the speeding ticket

Into the glove compartment

 

Speaking in a quiet voice with a slow tone

I had never heard before

To the very short policeman

And why are you looking at me now?

 

Sometimes in an elevator

In one of the great cities

I'll smell his after shave lotion

And look around at the empty air

I like that   I like that a lot




John McKernan—who grew up in Omaha Nebraska in the middle of the USA—is now a retired comma herder after teaching 41 years at Marshall University. He lives in West Virginia and Florida. His most recent book is a selected poems, Resurrection of the Dust.  He has published poems in The Atlantic Monthly, The Paris Review, The New Yorker, Virginia Quarterly Review, The Journal, Antioch Review, Guernica, Field, and many other magazines.









                                    

 

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