*
Every now and then I put a poem of my own in the Lyrical Somerville.

Doug Holder is the arts/editor of The Somerville Times, he is on the board of the New England Poetry Club, and the Friends of the Longfellow House. He is the co-founder of the Ibbetson Street Press of Somerville, MA. and teaches at Endicott College in Beverly, MA.

A Dream of my father at Grand Central Station

We were at Grand Central Station
I could hear the pound of the women’s Delman heels
on the polished floors
My father wore a Brooks Brothers sports coat
with only underwear
pink socks,
stick legs
and varicose veins.

He was tired
he sat on some chest
near the information booth
He said,
“Kid, I failed you”
and downed a shot
from his flask of Vodka.

Then he was gone.

I looked in the chest
there were New York Yankee tickets
from 1933
stationary from J. Walter Thompson
an ad he wrote for the Jack Paar show
stacks of newspapers
the ones he always carried
New York Post, Daily News, and the Times
a purple heart from World War 2
pictures of him smiling widely
a Toots Shore restaurant painting
with Joe DiMaggio’s signature
Oh, where have you gone
Joe,
a nation turns
its lonely eyes to you…

But I was lost,
and he was gone.

 — Doug Holder

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To have your work considered for the Lyrical send it to:
Doug Holder, 25 School St.; Somerville, MA 02143
dougholder@post.harvard.edu