Angry dads

writer’s note: My offering for this advent season is a poem that’s not about snow or a black sky pricked with starlight or a stable with cattle hanging about the edges. It’s a tropical piece that comes straight out of the Caribbean; a humorous and heavy composition that recounts two or three of the fifty thousand steps I’ve been passing through on my way to an understanding of the ineffable divine. It’s a poem about the restless entitlement earthly dads can exhibit and the humble cheer that characterizes the heavenly one. And at its core, it’s a poem about Christmas, leaning heavily into the brave assertion G.K. Chesterton made in his own Christmas poetry: that the midst of the earth is a raging mirth / And the heart of the earth a star.

ANGRY DADS                                                                              

Here, as everywhere, they seem to pursue us.
The pitch and toss of a day is too much for
them, even a day delectable with seafoam

and shine and the Shots Guy going from table
to table after dinner, flourishing a platter
of sparkle and burn–their favorite things.

On the ship’s tender a human tornado briefs

his whole timid family on the storm he’s

preparing. When I get up, you jump up, you

follow me, he rumbles. He ain’t gon’ wait in

no line. Is he a man that he should practice

patience and perspicacity? No. He is blizzard

and typhoon and maelstrom and mad [at

other people for existing and at the Italian

restaurant that can’t seat him yet because

all their servers are serving]. Don’t paint God

with this brush and expect the gallery to be

full of heart and hush. We’ve spent enough

time behind the thin doors of shuddering

closets, willing the hinges to hold. No, if I

dared to paint again, I know just the man

I would use for my sable bristles. He dips

himself in so many hues of happiness, peers

into my eyes all the time to ask isn’t this good?

He is a flying buttress, a buttered pancake,

a thing you can’t regret. He is splattered

to the eyebrows with cyan, magenta and joy.

The featured image titled “Dancing Bears” is (c) Lancia E. Smith and used with her glad permission for The Cultivating Project.

Bryana Joy

Bryana Joy is a writer, poet, and full-time artist who spends most of her time making and mailing the Letters From The Sea Tower, a handmade monthly subscription letter full of watercolor sketches, paintings, and snippets of glory from the Great Books. Bryana has lived in Turkey, Texas, and England, and currently resides in Eastern Pennsylvania with her husband. She enjoys hosting online poetry workshops, and her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in an assortment of literary magazines, including The Christian Century, Beloit Poetry Journal, and Chestnut Review. Bryana takes delight in thunderstorms, loose-leaf tea, green countrysides, and the music of Johann Sebastian Bach.

www.bryanajoy.com