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Father's Day

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  • Poem

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    Stunt Double

    By Tomás Q. Morín
    In this life, there are stars
    and there are stunt doubles.

    Before I became one of those fathers
    obsessed with memorizing his lines,
    making peace with the Big Director
    in the sky who doesn’t like ad libs,
    before all that, I was the star
    of my own...
  • Poem

    The Same City

    By Terrance Hayes
    The rain falling on a night   
        in mid-December,
    I pull to my father’s engine   
        wondering how long I’ll remember   
    this. His car is dead. He connects   
        jumper cables to his battery,   
    then to mine without looking in   
        at me and the child. Water...
  • Poem

    Lines to My Father

    By Countee Cullen
    The many sow, but only the chosen reap;
    Happy the wretched host if Day be brief,
    That with the cool oblivion of sleep
    A dawnless Night may soothe the smart of grief.

    If from the soil our sweat enriches sprout
    One meagre blossom for our...
  • Poem

    Father’s Day for Gay Boys

    By Dan Vera
    One beside another—brothers
    Seven diviners
    of what lies beyond the truths we have uncovered. 
    One makes three, then four, then more
    until we move beyond mere numbers. 
    There is thunder over the city tonight
    and of the million hearts we may never see
    here in the circle...
  • Poem

    All My Pretty Ones

    By Anne Sexton
    Father, this year’s jinx rides us apart
    where you followed our mother to her cold slumber;
    a second shock boiling its stone to your heart,   
    leaving me here to shuffle and disencumber   
    you from the residence you could not afford:   
    a gold key, your half...
  • Poem

    Poem to My Child, If Ever You Shall Be

    By Ross Gay
    The way the universe sat waiting to become,
    quietly, in the nether of space and time,
     
    you too remain some cellular snuggle
    dangling between my legs, curled in the warm
     
    swim of my mostly quietest self. If you come to be—
    And who knows?—I wonder,...
  • Poem

    Those Winter Sundays

    By Robert Hayden
    Sundays too my father got up early
    and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
    then with cracked hands that ached
    from labor in the weekday weather made
    banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

    I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.breaking....
  • Poem

    The Giant Water Bug

    By Douglas Florian
    The giant water bug can lug
    His eggs upon his back.
    He gives them extra care up there
    And guards them from attack.
    The mother glues them to the dad,
    And on his way they stay.
    But does he ever get a card
    Or gift on Father's...
  • Poem

    Bewitched Playground

    By David Rivard
    Each could picture probably
    with great care his brother drawing   
    the corded string of a watered silk bag
    and mumbling to Basho above the keepsake   
    pay your respects to mother's white hair   
    now your eyebrows look a little white too
    but all have turned instead to...
  • Poem

    His Stillness

    By Sharon Olds
    The doctor said to my father, “You asked me
    to tell you when nothing more could be done.   
    That’s what I’m telling you now.” My father   
    sat quite still, as he always did,
    especially not moving his eyes. I had thought   
    he would rave if...
  • Poem

    Digging

    By Seamus Heaney
    Between my finger and my thumb   
    The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.

    Under my window, a clean rasping sound   
    When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:   
    My father, digging. I look down

    Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds   
    Bends low, comes up twenty...
  • Poem

    Supernatural Love

    By Gjertrud Schnackenberg
    My father at the dictionary-stand   
    Touches the page to fully understand   
    The lamplit answer, tilting in his hand

    His slowly scanning magnifying lens,   
    A blurry, glistening circle he suspends
    Above the word “Carnation.” Then he bends

    So near his eyes are magnified and blurred,   
    One finger on...
  • Poem

    On my First Son

    By Ben Jonson
    Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy;
    My sin was too much hope of thee, lov'd boy.
    Seven years tho' wert lent to me, and I thee pay,
    Exacted by thy fate, on the just day.
    O, could...
  • Poem

    The Lost Pilot

    By James Tate
    Your face did not rot
    like the others—the co-pilot,   
    for example, I saw him

    yesterday. His face is corn-
    mush: his wife and daughter,   
    the poor ignorant people, stare

    as if he will compose soon.
    He was more wronged than Job.   
    But your face did not rot

    like the...
  • Poem

    Carpentry

    By Carl Dennis
    Carpenters whose wives have run off
    Are sometimes discovered weeping on the job.   
    But even then they don’t complain of their work.

    Whitman’s father was a carpenter.
    He was so happy hammering houses
    That he jumped with a shout from the roof beam   
    And rolled with...
  • Poem

    Father and Son

    By Delmore Schwartz
    Father:
    On these occasions, the feelings surprise,   
    Spontaneous as rain, and they compel   
    Explicitness, embarrassed eyes——


    Son:
    Father, you’re not Polonius, you’re reticent,   
    But sure. I can already tell
    The unction and falsetto of the sentiment   
    Which gratifies the facile mouth, but springs   
    From no felt, had,...
  • Poem

    The Little Boy Lost

    By William Blake
    Father, father, where are you going
           O do not walk so fast.
    Speak father, speak to your little boy
           Or else I shall be lost,

    The night was dark no father was there
           The child was wet with dew.
    The mire was deep,...
  • Poem

    Danse Russe

    By William Carlos Williams
    If I when my wife is sleeping
    and the baby and Kathleen
    are sleeping
    and the sun is a flame-white disc
    in silken mists
    above shining trees,—
    if I in my north room
    dance naked, grotesquely
    before my mirror
    waving my shirt round my head
    and singing softly to myself:
    “I...
  • Poem

    The Cane-Bottom’d Chair

    By William Makepeace Thackeray
    In tattered old slippers that toast at the bars,
    And a ragged old jacket perfumed with cigars,
    Away from the world and its toils and its cares,
    I’ve a snug little kingdom up four pair of stairs.

    To mount to this realm is a...
  • Poem

    To Her Father with Some Verses

    By Anne Bradstreet
    Most truly honoured, and as truly dear,
    If worth in me or ought I do appear,
    Who can of right better demand the same
    Than may your worthy self from whom it came?
    The principal might yield a greater sum,
    Yet handled ill, amounts but...
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