My Papa’s Waltz
by Theodore Roethke
The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.
We romped until the pans
Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother’s countenance
Could not unfrown itself.
The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle.
You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.
This one was suggested by a friend and poet. Is is a dance of joy–a small boy with his father? Or a fearsome waltz with an abuser?
Manuscript evidence shows that Roethke’s small dancer was originally a girl. Does that shed light…or make it even stranger?
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