Papa
In the cellar by the
boiler
You jacked the house
up to install
Long before I came
along.
You take a swallow
of your beer,
Eject a dog-colored
stream
Into the brass
spittoon. Tell me how
An orphan, taken in
by farmers
For unpaid labor,
you forgot the bread
Baking in the
woodstove. A beating
Was certain, so you
fled, 12 years old
Riding the rails
west.
In the mines, you
drove a mule train, liked
Horses better, just
like me. You
Joined the Wobblies,
damn the bosses.
Met Mary and got
hitched after courting
With a rented nag
and buggy.
Seven kids, four
lived. You loaded coal
On the docks at
Calumet. Your tongue
Sliced for cancer,
you still had your chaw
Until the day you
collapse
Shoveling snow, too
stubborn
To wait for
help.
Joan Colby lives on a small horse farm in Northern Illinois with her
husband and assorted animals. She has had seven books
published including "The Lonely Hearts Killers" and "The Atrocity Book". Joan is widely
published in such publications as Poetry, Atlanta Review, Spoon River Poetry
Review, The New York Quarterly, South Dakota Review, Epoch, and others. She has received two Illinois
Arts Council Literary Awards and an IAC Literary Fellowship. Joan also received an honorable mention in the 2008 James Hearst Poetry Contest—North American Review
and the 2009 Editor’s Choice Contest - Margie, and was a finalist in the 2007 GSU (now
New South) Poetry Contest, 2009 Nimrod International Pablo Neruda Prize, 2010
James Hearst Poetry Contest and Ernest J. Poetry Prize. She is currently a finalist in
the 2012 Pablo Neruda Prize. A new chapbook “Dead Horses” forthcoming from Future
Cycle Press.
