If I were my father’s daughter
he might call me Junebug
the way most fathers
nickname their children.
I would call him dad
rather than by his last name,
which I did
in mocking tones,
hey Giss(th)endanner…
with the lisp
of two missing front teeth.
He is your dad, you know,
my mom would say;
down the grocery aisles
I would sing then
dad dad dad dad dad;
hey daad, can I get some Oreos,
as if the word had two syllables,
no answer
hey daad, can you stay for dinner,
no answer.
He brought the grocery money
in pinstriped suits
and red ties,
creases on his hands,
his face,
like grooves
on a record
of old country hymns
that quietly played in my heart.
Evie McCarthy grew up in Florida, but now makes her home in Asheville. She graduated from Prescott College in Arizona with a degree in Creative Writing and hopes to pursue her MFA in the coming year. She has had nonfiction published as a front feature in the Key West Citizen and poetry published in The Homestead Review and Mountain Gazette.
About Junebug—Writing poems about family is easy and hard at the same time. The memories of a broken family are a little too easy to recall. The events of being a small child are still fresh after almost thirty years. Sometimes it is hard to recall those memories as an adult knowing the full meaning certain life experiences hold. Poetry is my way of moving past a sad reminiscence and finding some humor in it.
