American Dad

Chris Ellery

June 9, 2024

This cat racking the balls

wears a skull on his arm

and a nimbus of toxic red neon

as he blusters and brags

and breaks. Somewhere,

says he, he has four kids.

“None of them knows I’m alive.

Don’t care.”

An old feral tomcat I knew

when I was a kid

killed a litter of kittens he sired.

A bite through the skull of each.

At Bramble Park, my dad

said I should try

the very most tallest slide

in the whole wide world

and stood at the bottom

to catch me. From the top

he looked very small

but grew bigger and bigger

as I flew down and down

with a whoosh of weeeeeee

into the gravity

of his powerful arms.

Chris Ellery is a retired teacher living in San Angelo. His most recent collection of poetry is Canticles of the Body. A new book, One Like Silence, is forthcoming later this year. Contact him at ellerychris10@gmail.com.