My Father Wrote A Novel
By Amanda Strand
My father wrote a novel once
367 Pages
During basic training
At Camp Rucker, Alabama
Late at night when the air cooled to just about breathable
Stripped to his T-shirt and shorts
Two knuckles of whiskey in a tooth glass
A pack of Pall Mall’s, a book of matches
The typewriter ribbon faded from each of a thousand first attempts
Palmetto bugs clinging to the ceiling attracted by the bare bulb.
After running ordnance drills in the dust all day
While the other soldiers twisted in their bunks
My father wrote a novel
Before the death of his first-born son
Before my mother threw crockery
Before her mother threw knives
Before the lung cancer strangled his father
Before he and his brother stopped speaking
And the drinking got out of hand
Back at Camp Rucker, Alabama,
my father wrote a novel
367 pages
Before life took his words away.
Amanda Bidlack Strand’s poetry has appeared in American Life in Poetry, Future Cycle Poetry, Frank: An International Journal of Contemporary Writing and Art, and The River. She is a graduate of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. She lives in Jonesboro, Maine.
