Tuesday Poem - Dad by Rachel McGladdery

Dad


Rolling in one night on sea legs
made entirely from White Lightning,
he bowled up at mine and fell in through the door.

I helped him up and sat him down
and once propped upon a chair with a cup of tea he told me he had AIDS.
"Oh Dad" I said and went to hug him.
He held his hand out like a nicotine stained starfish.

" you don't have to bleach the cup"

I held him sadly as he sobbed into my shoulder,

"Don't treat me like a leopard"

I hooked up with Rachel on Facebook. She lives up there in Britland and I live down here in the Antipodes and we haven't met in the flesh but I follow the story of her life via her status updates, and maybe she follows mine. Sometimes we have a bit of a witty chitchat. She seems to have a lot of success with her poetry and she deserves to I think. Her work is so sharp and astute and full of flavour. Very tasty stuff, indeed.

Rachel McGladdery has been writing poetry seriously for around 2 years. She has performed at many venues throughout North West England. She won the NXNW Slam in August 2010 at The Tudor House Wigan and also won the title of Liverpool Lennon Poet 2010 in November 2010 and was awarded with her trophy by Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy. She has been published in Mental Arts Virus Magazine, Preston is my Paris Zine, Word Soup Year One, Dragonheart Press - Winter Poets,and is due to have a poem in a new Forward anthology published in February 2011 'When I speak to you of love...'. She also has work published at The Pygmy Giant. Rachel was Featured Poet in the Poetry Kit's series, Caught In The Net #72. You can see more of Rachel's work here: http://writeoutloud.net/poets/rachelmcgladdery.
Rachel lives in rural Lancashire with her 4 children and 2 cats and is a closet birdwatcher.