Sunday Drives with My Father
My sister and I used to watch him
trying to nod off
his eyes like fat little knotholes.
When he looked back
in the rearview mirror
we tugged at our dresses
and tucked our chins.
Read your bible
he’d sing as he swerved
to hit an enemy blacksnake,
reddening at his ear-tips
when we cried for the stunned
life, its knowledge of good and evil
coiled on the seat between us.
We’d press our faces to the window
then, tears offered to the moon
as it rose and spread
its silvery skin over the road
that shrank behind us.
Sharon Ackerman holds an M.Ed from the University of Virginia and is poetry editor for Streetlight Magazine. Her poems have appeared in the Atlanta Review, Northern Virginia Review, Cumberland Review, and various others. She is the winner of the Hippocrates Poetry in Medicine international contest, London 2019. Her poetry collection Revised Light is available through Main Street Rag publishing company.