My personal challenge for National Poetry Month is to write
a poem a day about the father I have never known.

I’m not promising perfect poems but I am promising emotional honesty.

THE CHILD I WAS

The child I was had
long blonde hair (combing optional)
freckles that multiplied in the summer
dirty fingernails from playing in the mud
scabs on her knees and elbows
baby dolls and a green bicycle and a room of her own at the top of the stairs
a grandmother who taught her to sew
a grandfather who taught her to hammer
a mother that loved her with all that she had in her
and a daddy-sized hole in her heart

divorce wasn’t talked about
support groups for single moms didn’t exist
and unfeeling teachers forced me
to make cards for Father’s Day
filled with words of love for a man I didn’t know
cards I wanted to save for someday
when I met him
cards I would throw in the garbage
on the way home from school
before my mother could find them

long before I learned about genetics
I wondered what parts of him
made up what parts of me
and why just being me
was never enough

when people ask me how I came to be a writer
I often tell them it’s because I had no father
and all my life I’ve been making up stories about who is
and why he never came back for me
pretending he was off adventuring
pretending he would someday return to claim me
righting my upside-down world
pretending anything
was easier than accepting that maybe
he was never coming back
because he never wanted me at all

the child I was
wanted so much to believe
that anything was possible
that all fathers love their daughters
that all families belong together
but fairy tales don’t often come true
and little girls grow up to learn
that some holes are best left alone
before they swallow you whole
and you lose yourself
to what you never knew
and forget
who you have become

@copyright Susan Taylor Brown 2010
All Rights Reserved

My personal challenge for National Poetry Month is to write
a poem a day about the father I have never known.

Will Blood Tell?

I can count the stories told about my father
on just one hand
and none of them have happy endings.
He broke my mother’s heart, her trust,
yet his blood runs in my veins.

I know the ways I am most like my mom
but what do I get from this man
I do not know?

As a child, every night after dinner,
my grandfather and I would play Go Fish
at the big dining room table.
I liked to straighten the cards into neat little piles
on Nana’s white lace tablecloth
while Papa chewed on a toothpick and
contemplated his next move.

The day he caught me cheating
he put the cards away
without saying a word.

All night long
he wouldn’t speak to me
and the shame I felt sat in my stomach
like a lead cannonball
until I cried myself to sleep.

For days afterward I wondered
what it meant that I would
jeopardize my grandfather’s trust
to cheat at a silly game of cards.

Even now, I find it hard to see the best in me
so when they say
blood will tell
the truth of evil
which cannot be concealed
I am frightened
of the sleeping monster I imagine that waits within me
the monster that makes me wonder
if I am more like my father
than I might want to know?

@copyright Susan Taylor Brown 2010
All Rights Reserved

Look for the sure-to-be giant round-up of all the Poetry Friday posts at The Book Aunt.

My personal challenge for National Poetry Month is to write
a poem a day about the father I have never known.

Nana often said
good riddance to bad rubbish
her junk, my treasure

@copyright Susan Taylor Brown 2010
All Rights Reserved

My personal challenge for National Poetry Month is to write
a poem a day about the father I have never known. 

PICTURE THIS

I never thought about my dad (much)
at holidays like Easter or Christmas or Thanksgiving
when my grandparent’s house overflowed
with aunts and uncles and cousins
and loud family noises ricocheted
throughout the house like a parade of auditory hugs.
But birthdays
usually a quieter time
always made me wish for him
wondering if I blew out all the candles
if there might be a present, a card
some acknowledgment
of his connection to my birth.

He saw me only once
still a baby in a crib
and then no more
but an uncle from his side of the family
came to ask about me
my mother said she showed him
my school picture
my hair pulled back with plastic barrettes
my white shirt with the Peter Pan collar
and I like to imagine him studying it
memorizing my face so he could describe it
to my dad

Last year
I found my father’s death notice
and I saw that uncle’s name.
I wondered if he remembered asking
about me
and did he carry back stories to my dad
about me
or did he just tuck them into some secret place of his own
knowing that my father
didn’t want to know?

@copyright Susan Taylor Brown 2010
All Rights Reserved

My personal challenge for National Poetry Month is to write
a poem a day about the father I have never known.

LIES I’VE TOLD

My dad is a movie star
pretty soon he’ll come get me
we’ll go to Hollywood
and I’ll be on his TV show.
Want my autograph?

He’s a spy
an astronaut
a famous scientist working on a cure for Polio
really.

I can’t come to your party
because my dad is taking me
to the zoo.
We always go to the monkey house first.

Right now my dad is asleep
so we have to play at your house.
(Can’t you hear him snoring?)

My dad travels a lot.
but he taught me how to tie my shoes
ride a bike
and how to speak Pig-Latin
so we could share secrets just between us.

Last week he gave me his lucky silver dollar
and promised to buy me a pony
for my birthday.

He’ll be home soon
and you can ask him yourself.

@copyright Susan Taylor Brown 2010
All Rights Reserved

My personal challenge for National Poetry Month is to write
a poem a day about the father I have never known.

MORE LIES I TOLD

In 4th grade,
hungry for praise of any kind,
I volunteered to memorize
the preamble to the constitution
practicing over and over
until I could recite the whole thing
without once looking at the words
scribbled on my hand.

My teacher sent me to another class
to show off how her teaching skills
made me good at memorizing.

One deep breath, then
I recited each word, smooth and clear,
pausing to make sure I didn’t trip over
“domestic tranquility” or “posterity”

Finished, the class clapped
then the teacher asked my name,
smiling when I told her,
smiling the kind of smile you smile
when something makes you feel good inside.

Any relation to Tommy Webb?

My heart pounded
when the name we never spoke at home
was blurted out in a room full of people.
My father’s name.
The father I didn’t know.
The father I felt sure
held the very answer to who I was
or who I was supposed to be.

But I was good at more than memorizing.

Trained for years to pretend
there was no such person as Tommy Webb
and if there was,
he had no hold on me,
I shook my head and said,

No. No relation at all.

@copyright Susan Taylor Brown 2010
All Rights Reserved

My personal challenge for National Poetry Month is to write
a poem a day about the father I have never known.

SUNDAYS

For church I wore my Sunday uniform -
a lacy dress my grandmother made
puffed out with white tulle petticoats
that almost kissed my nose when I sat down
short white gloves
patent leather shoes
and ankle socks edged in lace.

As the bells called us to gather
I watched fathers guide mothers into pews,
a hand placed low on the back,
then the children filed in,
one by one,
sandwiched between two towers of love.

It made my heart ache
to see a father
share a hymnal with his daughter
pass a coin from his pocket
and let her drop it in the plate on her own.

I held my mother’s hand
as she found her own place to sit
away from the families, and the people,
who would frown at her
for being divorced.

I never thought about what it must have been like for her
seeing all those happy families
singing for their salvation.

I only thought about me.
It was always about me.

Each week
the service ended the same way.
I pretended to whisper The Lord’s Prayer
but really
I prayed a different prayer of my own.

My father, who isn’t here,
Tommy is your name.
When will you come?
When will you come?
When will you come?
for me?

@copyright Susan Taylor Brown 2010
All Rights Reserved

My personal challenge for National Poetry Month is to write
a poem a day about the father I have never known.

WHERE AM I?

The only pictures I’ve ever seen
are from their wedding.
My mother looked like a princess
with her tiny waist
in her lace dress
smiling her perfect smile for the camera.
My father wore a white jacket that
hung loose on his thin frame
his hair cut so short
that his big ears stuck out
like a car with both doors open.

My mother kept the pictures
in the pink box with her wedding dress
tucked in the corner of my grandmother’s attic.
She never told me not to look
but I always waited for her to go to work
before I crept upstairs, found the pictures,
and spread them out until
I was surrounded
by my father’s face.

His hair was Cherokee black
his eyes dark
and when I looked at him
I could find nothing of myself to claim.

I wanted that black hair
growing long down my back
like a rope connecting me to him.
I would have even taken his big ears,
just to help him recognize me,
when he came home.

@copyright Susan Taylor Brown 2010
All Rights Reserved

My personal challenge for National Poetry Month is to write
a poem a day about the father I have never known.

IN THE BEGINNING

They met
while cranking homemade ice cream
he lived across the street
and invited her to share.
I imagine his eyes twinkling
and her laughing
and their hands touching while they
took turns.

I want to believe that
once upon a time
they were happy.

@copyright Susan Taylor Brown 2010
All Rights Reserved

My personal challenge for National Poetry Month is to write
a poem a day about the father I have never known.

NEW MATH

dad plus mom equals
happy family, not always,
sometimes less is more

@copyright Susan Taylor Brown 2010
All Rights Reserved

My personal challenge for National Poetry Month is to write
a poem a day about the father I have never known.

BLOODLINES

From my mother I get
my blond hair and blue eyes
my lack of height
my intense desire to avoid confrontation
at all costs, to give in to others
and make the world smooth out right
so people will like me

We share a love of animals
waffles smothered in maple syrup
and after many years, at last,
a joy of reading
but politics and religion
often reside in opposite corners
of our universes

I’ve been told I shouldn’t let it matter
yet how can I not wonder
about my genetic inheritance?

People don’t realize
how much it matters to a child
to know where they came from,
to contemplate what bits of nature might
have shaped the person they’ve become
even if where they came from
wasn’t a very nice place.

It’s the difference between walking gingerly through life
unsure when you are on solid ground
and marching forward with confidence
that you can take whatever the world
decides to throw your way.

@copyright Susan Taylor Brown 2010
All Rights Reserved

My personal challenge for National Poetry Month is to write
a poem a day about the father I have never known.

RING RING

Sometimes the phone would ring
and I would run to answer it but by the time I got there,
the line was dead.

Pressing the receiver against my ear
I pretended it was my dad
calling to check in on me while he was gone.

Curled into a ball
on the blue and white linoleum tiles in my grandmother’s kitchen
I twisted the cord around my finger,
answering make-believe questions
while the dial tone droned in my ear like a tired bee.

My grandmother caught me once
and told me to quit playing games
that the phone was not a toy
but still, each time it rang,
I raced to be the first one
to pick it up
and say hello.

@copyright Susan Taylor Brown 2010
All Rights Reserved

My personal challenge for National Poetry Month is to write
a poem a day about the father I have never known.

10 THINGS I WISH I KNEW ABOUT HIM

His favorite color
What kind of music he played on the radio
The cologne he wore
His strengths and his weaknesses
What kind of car he drove
Something he was proud of
Was he a morning person or a night owl
Something that made him laugh
What did he want really want to be when he grew up

Did he ever regret not meeting me?

@copyright Susan Taylor Brown 2010
All Rights Reserved

My personal challenge for National Poetry Month is to write
a poem a day about the father I have never known.

THE GIFT

Seven
one dollar bills
plucked from a tired wallet,
my father’s only gift,
when forced,
in family court.

@copyright Susan Taylor Brown 2010
All Rights Reserved

My personal challenge for National Poetry Month is to write
a poem a day about the father I have never known.

CONSUMED

It was just a small fire
smoldering
on the kitchen table when
she came home from work.

It was just a small box
of photos, school friends,
kept on the closet shelf,
cherished mementos
from my mothers childhood
melting into nothingness
on the Formica table.

It was just a small spark
of jealously, uncontainable,
for him.

It was just
a
small
fire.

@copyright Susan Taylor Brown 2010
All Rights Reserved

My personal challenge for National Poetry Month is to write
a poem a day about the father I have never known.

SNAPSHOT

In the wedding picture they printed
in the newspaper,
now faded black and white,
my mother’s smile
is the same smile
I saw
every morning when I woke up and
every night before bed.
It was the smile that
told me she loved me
told me I was her entire world
told me everything was going to be okay.

In the wedding picture they printed
in the newspaper,
torn just a little bit between the two of them,
my father’s smile
isn’t
there

at
all.

@copyright Susan Taylor Brown 2010
All Rights Reserved

It’s Poetry Friday and Jules at 7 Imp has the entire round-up of today’s poetry posts.

My personal challenge for National Poetry Month is to write
a poem a day about the father I have never known.

NO FORWARDING ADDRESS

I don’t remember the story very well,
I don’t even know if it was real,
maybe it was one of the ones I made up and told
so many times, that it became real to me.
In the story
someone came to the front door of my grandmother’s house,
asking if I was home,
asking to see me,
and my mom told my grandmother
to keep me in the kitchen
hidden from view.

That story got mixed up in my mind
with one I know was true,
the one my mother told me happened before I was born,
the one where men came to the front door of my grandmother’s house,
asking for my father
and my mother saying
he wasn’t there,
he was gone,
and she didn’t know where.

That’s what she told
those important men in suits
who needed to find my father,
needed to find him fast,
because of something he had done wrong.

All she had to give them was a list
of the people they invited to their wedding
less than a year before,
the only record she had, names and addresses of
my father’s friends, my father’s family
his mother, my grandmother
his sister, my aunt
his family, my family.

By the time I was old enough
to ask important questions
it was too late,
she couldn’t remember where anyone lived
where he might have gone
and my father,
his family
my family,
was nowhere to be found.

@copyright Susan Taylor Brown 2010
All Rights Reserved

My personal challenge for National Poetry Month is to write
a poem a day about the father I have never known.

CASE CLOSED

He forgot
how to be kind to her,
so while my mother’s belly grew round with me
she left, determined
to build a safe and loving home
for me.

Worried
he would come
take me
where she would never
find me.
she did what she thought best,
to keep me
free from harm.

One year and a day
that’s how long
she had to wait
to terminate his rights
to see me.

I never knew.

@copyright Susan Taylor Brown 2010
All Rights Reserved

My personal challenge for National Poetry Month is to write
a poem a day about the father I have never known.

I TRIED

Wishbones on Thanksgiving
my birthday cake each July
dandelions in the summer
pennies in the wishing well at the park,
and the first star, every night, before bed

Nana used to say
that wishing don’t make it so
but not wishing meant giving
up completely

@copyright Susan Taylor Brown 2010
All Rights Reserved

My personal challenge for National Poetry Month is to write
a poem a day about the father I have never known.

LESSONS LEARNED

For a while, Teresa was my best friend
and we played at her house after school
because her mom didn’t have a job.

We drank grape Kool-Aid
and ate pink and white animal crackers
sitting on the teeter-totter
in her backyard.

Teresa said her dad
was the best dad because
he taught her how to whistle
with a piece of grass between her fingers,
how to ride her bike with no hands,
and how to throw a curve ball
better than Brucie Gilbert
who lived across the street.

I let her think she had the best dad
but I knew better.
My dad gave me a super power —

he taught me how to be invisible.

@copyright Susan Taylor Brown 2010
All Rights Reserved