field of dreams

Poems My Father Gave Me

dirt farmer hands
punching bag heart
sea sponge brain

at home cigarette smoke choking
in school corporal punishment scarring
around town drunk's son snickering

midwest-depressed-impoverished landscape
surrounding
dead-end-of-the-street-man-made geology

railroads
silos
derricks

an oil field of dreams
a wheat field of dreams
the wrong-side-of-the-tracks reality

these are the poems my father gave me