Can any topic be used for a poem? A narrative of a father drunk vomiting… agreeing to drive daughter to work during a winter storm–how can that be in a poem? I’m feeling the story wants to be a poem–or am I being influenced too much by Hayden’s “Those Winter Sundays?”

Because I have been reading poetry and keep coming back to  “what did I know” This father is not a farmer, but a father who wasn’t always drunk and sometimes tried to help his daughter get to work so she could save money for college.  (When he wasn’t waiting for her paycheck to “give it home,” if he was drunk on payday—before direct deposits.)

Because no, maybe fiction would be better. The father heaving, vomiting between telling Lo he will, he should drive her to work in a storm, not to walk in the storm. Lo wondering… can she trust Da to drive her?

Fun to explore the decision of what genre would be best for a narrative. Interesting to learn what these characters insist on–poetry, my usual genre, or fiction?

Da Girl

Da, girl says
Are you sure you can drive?
Five minutes, he says.

Tap-water instant
Coffee effort Not doing it.

Can you boil water, Lo,
can you?

Five minutes more, he says,
Don’t walk, I hear
The storm.

Da, she whispers,
I’ll lost my job,
Searching the sideways blizzard.

***And a link to Hayden’s poem: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46461/those-winter-sundays