The Last Poem for My Father
By Micky Jo Myers
PROMPT—Never will I forget ...
In middle school, I started writing poetry. It wasn't any good. I don't know now and I certainly wasn't then aware of any techniques or guidelines or any other metrics by which one might create good poetry. I only had a vague notion that abandoned articles and unexpected line breaks could feel quite clever.
I wrote a poem about a teacher I didn't like at the time. She spoke down to me about not trying hard even though I was smart. In retrospect, she wasn't wrong but she didn't try to do much more than bully me which I still believe isn't effective pedagogy. I wrote a poem that I no longer remember but I vaguely recall it had a vibe of 'fuck you I won't do what you tell me.' I know it got to the final stage of a Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul admission process. It wasn't accepted, and they sent me back a paper copy with whiteout on the pages. When I scrapped off the whiteout, someone had written on it, 'This is good but it isn't chicken-soup-y'. I knew, even then, that I should take it as a compliment.
My father printed a copy out, framed it, and hung it in his office. He'd worked in return goods for more than a decade before being promoted to management. Once there, he was able to see his own personnel file. He found out his former boss had wanted to fire him numerous times for his attitude but wouldn't because, as he wrote in his notes, he feared 'Mike' would come back in and shoot the place up if he was let go. My father, of course, took this a source of pride. Work hard and let them know you're crazy.
His office was basically a desk in the front of a warehouse. In my memory, it was a converted auto dealership. The walls were glass and situated in a corner across from the front door of what would have been a showroom. I can remember walking in once and seeing the frame hanging up behind his desk where a diploma or license would go under other circumstances. You have a degree. My middle schooler wrote this poem. I don't know that anything has ever made me feel such uncomplicated pride as that.
I wrote him another one.
All of the employees who worked under him were women. This hadn't been the make up of the department when he worked there. It had been just him and two or three other men. At some point that changed and my father was put in charge. He would come home, complaining that some of the women were accusing him of having favorites that he treated differently. He would insist he favored the women who were 'good workers' - those who came in, did their job, and 'didn't bitch'. Bitching was the worst thing a woman could do. The women who weren't good workers, thought my father was having a affair with the best worker.
I wrote a poem about gossip and reputation. I wrote about how people will try to bring down a good man rather than be a better worker.
I didn't know he was having an affair with my classmate's mother.
I wrote about integrity because I had drilled into my head, over and over, that my father possessed that trait. I printed the poem on the family computer, centered in blue ink with cleverly place line breaks. I left it for him to find in the morning before work.
When I woke up for school, the poem was still on the computer desk. It was placed face down in a tray. He had seen it and not taken it with him to frame. He clearly didn't like it. I was embarrassed and devastated by my work for the first time. I wondered why he didn't take it to at least humor me, even if he didn't like it.
That night, when he came home from work, I was locked out of the living room as he told my mother about the affair. I didn't put those two facts together for twenty years. I made him feel guilty just that once.
No one ever mentioned poetry to me again.
Micky Jo Myers recently completed a PhD in folklore and is currently unemployed. Those two facts might be related. Micky writes from Cleveland, Ohio.
