--YOU WERE ONLY WAITING FOR THIS MOMENT TO ARRIVE

 

…One of my favorite inventions is Post-it Notes.  I love them.  They’re life-savers.

…SOKOTKA Literary Magazine came in the mail today and on page 48, marked with a Post-it Note, is a poem of mine. 

This one:
 
A Million Silver Studs

My daughter’s friends pull up in a car

that seems to leap in place,
humping the air like a metal dinosaur in heat,
bass turned up so loud the driveway quakes
and neighbors fly to their windows.
The three of them are all hairy
and pierced,
tatted up,
in short-sleeved shirts,
boys looking like bored inmates,
leaning on the car hood,
not even bothering to broach the porch.
“Yo, Mr. K.,” one says,
his pissed off smirk
a reaction to last week
when I found him
in our basement
on top of my daughter.
She’s at the door in an instant,
wearing crocheted nylons shredded around the thighs,
black army boots with thick soles,
frayed cutoffs,
and a motorcycle jacket too sizes too big,
bejeweled with a million silver studs.
I grab her wrist to stop her from prancing down the steps.
The sun glints off her nose ring, her lip hoops,
the twin rhinestones imbedded by her eyebrows.
“Fucking what?”
And here’s where words fail me again,
where I fail myself,
fail my daughter,
thinking maybe my Ex was right after all.
I look down and release my grip,
afraid she’ll see my tears
and think even less of me,
if that’s even possible.
When I look again,
she’s actually skipping toward the car,
swiveling around as she once did in her bouncy chair,
saying, “I love you, Dad,”
while showing me her middle finger.